Her Straw Hat Was Trimmed With Delicate Flowers, And Her White Muslin Dress And Pale Blue Ribbons Made Her The Prettiest Picture I Ever Saw Out-Of-Doors.

I could not help asking Mrs. Locky who she was, and she told me that she was the chambermaid at the inn, and the other was the cook.

When I heard this I didn't make any answer, but just walked off a little way and began raking and thinking. I have often wondered why it is that English servants are so different from those we have, or, to put it in a strictly confidential way between you and me, madam, why the chambermaid at the "Bordley Arms," as she is, is so different from me, as I used to be when I first lived with you. Now that young chambermaid with the pretty hat is, as far as appearances go, as good a woman as I am, and if Jone was a bachelor and intended to marry her I would think it was as good a match as if he married me. But the difference between us two is that when I got to be the kind of woman I am I wasn't willing to be a servant, and if I had always been the kind of young woman that chambermaid is I never would have been a servant.

I've kept a sharp eye on the young women in domestic service over here, having a fellow-feeling for them, as you can well understand, madam, and since I have been in the country I've watched the poor folks and seen how they live, and it's just as plain to me as can be that the young women who are maids and waitresses over here are the kind who would have tried to be shop-girls and dressmakers and even school-teachers in America, and many of the servants we have would be working in the fields if they lived over here. The fact is, the English people don't go to other countries to get their servants. Their way is like a factory consuming its own smoke. The surplus young women, and there must always be a lot of them, are used up in domestic service.

Now, if an American poor girl is good enough to be a first-class servant, she wants to be something else. Sooner than go out to service she will work twice as hard in a shop, or even go into a factory.

I have talked a good deal about this to Jone, and he says I'm getting to be a philosopher; but I don't think it takes much philosophizing to find out how this case stands. If house service could be looked upon in the proper way, it wouldn't take long for American girls who have to work for their living to find out that it's a lot better to live with nice people, and cook and wait on the table, and do all those things which come natural to women the world over, than to stand all day behind a counter under the thumb of a floor-walker, or grind their lives out like slaves among a lot of steam-engines and machinery. The only reason the English have better house servants than we have is that here any girl who has to work is willing to be a house servant, and very good house servants they are, too.

Letter Number Eight

CHEDCOMBE

I will now finish telling you about the great hay-making day. Toward the end of the afternoon a lot of boys and girls began playing a game which seemed to belong to the hayfield. Each one of the bigger boys would twist up a rope of hay and run after a girl, and when he had thrown it over her neck he could kiss her. Girls are girls the whole world over, and it was funny to see how some of them would run like mad to get away from the boys, and how dreadfully troubled they would be when they was caught, and yet, after they had been kissed and the boys had left them, they would walk innocently back to the players as if they never dreamed that anybody would think of disturbing them.

At five o'clock everybody - farm hands, ladies, gentlemen, school-children, and all - took tea together. Some were seated at long tables made of planks, with benches at the sides, and others scattered all over the grass. Miss Pondar and our maid Hannah helped to serve the tea and sandwiches, and I was glad to see that Hannah wore her pointed white cap and her black dress, for I had on my woollen travelling suit, and I didn't want too much cart-before-the-horseness in my domestic establishment.

After tea the work and the games began again, and as I think it is always better for people to do what they can do best, I turned in and helped clear away the tea-things, and after that I sat down by a female person in black silk - and I am sure I didn't know whether she was the lady of the manor or somebody else until I heard some h-words come out in her talk, and then I knew she was the latter - and she told me ever so much about the people in the village, and why the rector wasn't there, on account of a dispute about the altar-cloths, and she was just beginning to tell me about the doctor's wife sending her daughters to a school that was much too high-priced for his practice, when I happened to look across the field, and there, with the bar lady at the inn, with her hat trimmed with pink, and the Marie Antoinette chambermaid, with her hat trimmed with blue, was Jone, and they was all three raking together, as comfortable and confiding as if they had been singing hymns out of the same book.

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