Harriet Stowe - The Minister's Wooing

‘You see,’ she said, ‘as I was a-settin’ in the spring-house, this mornin’, a-workin’ my butter, I says to Dinah, – “I’m goin’ to carry a pot of this down to Miss Scudder for the Doctor, – I got so much good out of his Sunday’s sermon.” And Dinah she says to me, says she, – “Laws, Miss Jones, I thought you was asleep, for sartin!” But I wasn’t; only I forgot to take any carraway-seed in the mornin’, and so I kinder missed it; you know it ’livens one up. But I never lost myself so but what I kinder heerd him goin’ on, on, sort o’ like, – and it sounded all sort o’ good; and so I thought of the Doctor to-day.’

‘Well, I’m sure,’ said Aunt Katy, ‘this will be a treat; we all know about your butter, Mrs. Jones. I sha’n’t think of putting any of mine on table to-night, I’m sure.’

‘Law, now don’t!’ said Mrs. Jones. ‘Why you re’lly make me ashamed, Miss Scudder. To be sure, folks does like our butter, and it always fetches a pretty good price, — he’s very proud on’t. I tell him he oughtn’t to be, – we oughtn’t to be proud of anything.’

And now Mrs. Katy, giving a look at the old clock, told Mary it was time to set the tea-table; and forthwith there was a gentle movement of expectancy. The little mahogany tea-table opened its brown wings, and from a drawer came forth the snowy damask covering. It was etiquette, on such occasions, to compliment every article of the establishment successively as it appeared; so the Deacon’s wife began at the table-cloth.

‘Well, I do declare, Miss Scudder beats us all in her table-cloths,’ she said, taking up a corner of the damask, admiringly; and Mrs. Jones forthwith jumped up and seized the other corner.

‘Why, this ’ere must have come from the Old Country. It’s most the beautiflest thing I ever did see.’

‘It’s my own spinning,’ replied Mrs. Katy, with conscious dignity. ‘There was an Irish weaver came to Newport the year before I was married, who wove beautifully, – just the Old-Country patterns, – and I’d been spinning some uncommonly fine flax then. I remember Mr. Scudder used to read to me while I was spinning,’ – and Aunt Katy looked afar, as one whose thoughts are in the past, and dropped out the last words with a little sigh, unconsciously, as to herself.

‘Wall, now, I must say,’ said Mrs. Jones, ‘this goes quite beyond me. I thought I could spin some; but I shan’t never dare to show mine.’

‘I’m sure, Mrs. Jones, your towels that you had out bleaching, this spring, were wonderful,’ said Aunt Katy. ‘But I don’t pretend to do much now,’ she continued, straightening her trim figure. ‘I’m getting old, you know; we must let the young folks take up these things. Mary spins better now than I ever did; Mary, hand out those napkins.’

And so Mary’s napkins passed from hand to hand.

‘Well, well,’ said Mrs. Twitchel to Mary, ‘it’s easy to see that your linen-chest will be pretty full by the time he comes along; won’t it, Miss Jones?’ – and Mrs Twitchel looked pleasantly facetious, as elderly ladies generally do, when suggesting such possibilities to younger ones.

Mary was vexed to feel the blood boil up in her cheeks in a most unexpected and provoking way at the suggestion; whereat Mrs. Twitchel nodded knowingly at Mrs. Jones, and whispered something in a mysterious aside, to which plump Mrs. Jones answered, – ‘Why, do tell! now I never!’

‘It’s strange,’ said Mrs. Twitchel, taking up her parable again, in such a plaintive tone that all knew something pathetic was coming, ‘what mistakes some folks will make, a-fetchin’ up girls. Now there’s your Mary, Miss Scudder, – why, there a’n’t nothin’ she can’t do: but law, I was down to Miss Skinner’s, last week, a-watchin’ with her, and re’lly it ’most broke my heart to see her. Her mother was a most amazin’ smart woman; but she brought Suky up, for all the world, as if she’d been a wax doll, to be kept in the drawer, – and sure enough, she was a pretty cretur, – and now she’s married, what is she? She ha’n’t no more idee how to take hold than nothin’. The poor child means well enough, and she works so hard she ’most kills herself; but then she is in the suds from mornin’ till night, – she’s one the sort whose work’s never done, – and poor George Skinner’s clean discouraged.’

‘There’s everything in knowing how ,’ said Mrs. Katy. ‘Nobody ought to be always working; it’s a bad sign. I tell Mary, – “Always do up your work in the forenoon.” Girls must learn that. I never work afternoons, after my dinner dishes are got away; I never did and never would.’

‘Nor I, neither,’ chimed in Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Twitchel, – both anxious to show themselves clear on this leading point of New-England housekeeping.

‘There’s another thing I always tell Mary,’ said Mrs. Katy, impressively. ‘“Never say there isn’t time for a thing that ought to be done. If a thing is necessary , why, life is long enough to find a place for it. That’s my doctrine. When anybody tells me they can’t find time for this or that, I don’t think much of ’em. I think they don’t know how to work, – that’s all.”’

Here Mrs. Twitchel looked up from her knitting, with apologetic giggle at Mrs. Brown.

‘Law, now, there’s Miss Brown, she don’t know nothin’ about it, ’cause she’s got her servants to every turn. I s’pose she thinks it queer to hear us talkin’ about our work. Miss Brown must have her time all to herself. I was tellin’ the Deacon the other day that she was a privileged woman.’

‘I’m sure, those that have servants find work enough following ’em ’round,’ said Mrs. Brown, – who, like all other human beings, resented the implication of not having as many trials in life as her neighbours. ‘As to getting the work done up in the forenoon, that’s a thing I never can teach ’em; they’d rather not. Chloe likes to keep her work ’round, and do it by snacks, any time, day or night, when the notion takes her.’

‘And it was just for that reason I never would have one of those creatures ’round,’ said Mrs. Katy. ‘Mr. Scudder was principled against buying negroes, – but if he had not been, I should not have wanted any of their work. I know what’s to be done, and most help is no help to me. I want people to stand out of my way and let me get done. I’ve tried keeping a girl once or twice, and I never worked so hard in my life. When Mary and I do all ourselves, we can calculate everything to a minute; and we get our time to sew and read and spin and visit, and live just as we want to.’

Here, again, Mrs. Brown looked uneasy. To what use was it that she was rich and owned servants, when this Mordecai in her gate utterly despised her prosperity? In her secret heart she thought Mrs. Katy must be envious, and rather comforted herself on this view of the subject, – sweetly unconscious of any inconsistency in the feeling with her views of utter self-abnegation just announced.

Meanwhile the tea-table had been silently gathering on its snowy plateau the delicate china, the golden butter, the loaf of faultless cake, a plate of crullers or wonders, as a sort of sweet fried cake was commonly called, – tea-rusks, light as a puff, and shining on top with a varnish of eggs, – jellies of apple and quince quivering in amber clearness, – whitest and purest honey in the comb, – in short, everything that could go to the getting-up of a most faultless tea.

‘I don’t see,’ said Mrs. Jones, resuming the gentle pæans of the occasion, ‘how Miss Scudder’s loaf-cake always comes out just so. It don’t rise neither to one side nor t’other, but just even all ’round; and it a’n’t white one side and burnt the other, but just a good brown all over; and it don’t have any heavy streak in it.’