Page:Live and Let Live.djvu/74

 hot water, I beg I may not be scalded with it. I wish you to be civil and obliging to everybody. The waiter may impose a little now and then—he will shirk sometimes—but he is so good I let him do as he pleases. Try and please Sophy—she is very good, though a little old maidish—but I never cross her. Mind your p's and q's with the wet-nurse—everybody must with a wet-nurse. Always be ready to run an errand for Mary Minturn—she hates to move off her chair. And always do what Becky tells you—what she wants done must be done. Be ready to do any little matter for the children, and try to please everybody. There's no hard work, you see—only odds and ends." Lucy had not experience enough to know that to work a little in everybody's field is much harder than to bring to perfection a corner of one. Mrs. Ardley's kindly manner pleased her. "So different," she thought, "from crabbed Mrs. Broadson! so sociable!" Mrs. Ardley's sociability was something like a brimful cup, always running over upon what chanced to be near her; however, to do her justice, she was very kindly disposed, though from the want of judgement and reflection her benevolence, like waste steam, was lost in noisy and useless effusions. Mrs. Ardley was the wife of a rich merchant. She had always lived in affluence. As far as she had thought about the matter, she believed this was the station Providence had allotted her; and she fancied also that there was a certain class born to understand and perform domestic service, while she and all in her category were to enjoy its results. She knew no more of that science which every woman should study, domestic economy, than the