University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.
REFORM.

Mrs. Ardley the very next morning set about
“reforming altogether” her household. Like that
of many fresh converts, her zeal was employed on
the faults of others rather than her own. “I am
resolved,” she said to Sophy, “to speak to Ferris
about her drinking—she is getting too bad!”

“I have long thought so, Mrs. Ardley; and really,
since she set the bed a-fire, I am afraid she will
burn herself up, and poor little Lucy too—her
month is up next week.”

“She is a capital cook—what nice made-dishes
she gets up!”

Without heeding Mrs. Ardley's interjection, Sophy
proceeded. “I heard Mary Minturn” (Mary was
the seamstress) “say that her health was failing so

sitting at the needle, that she would be thankful
for the cook's place if she could suit you.”

“Oh, she could not, possibly. What does she
know about cooking?”

“She has cooked in a gentleman's family. To
be sure it was a small one; but she says, if you
would be patient with her for the first month, she
could learn—she is very handy at learning, you
know, Mrs. Ardley—Mary Minturn is—she says
she likes cooking, and it agrees with her—and she
is dying by inches now.”

“She is out of the question, Sophy—I must have
a thoroughbred cook, that can do everything without
direction—you know Mr. Ardley and I are both
particular about the table. There's one good thing,
Ferris never get's fuddled till after her work is
done; and if you, Sophy, would just look in her
room after she goes to bed.”

“I can't undertake that, Mrs. Ardley; I have
quite enough to do without sitting up to look after
Ferris,” replied Sophy, who, in the main, was a
very good-tempered girl, though now ruffled by the
ill success of her proposition in behalf of her friend.

“I think you are very disobliging, Sophy,” rejoined
Mrs. Ardley, intent on rectifying wrong on
the right hand and on the left. “I have been quite
too indulgent. You are all getting spoiled, and I
really must require you to comply with my wishes.”

“It's not my work to look after the cook.”

“You all know what is not your work, though
you seldom know what is.” Sophy flung out of
the room without replying, and in the course of the
day announced to Mrs. Ardley, that as Mary Minturn
had determined to go when her month was up,

she should go too! Sophy was too valuable a domestic
to lose without an effort. “Really, Sophy,”
replied Mrs. Ardley, kindly, “it is foolish of you
to go on account of the few words we had this
morning.”

“It is not altogether that, Mrs. Ardley,” replied
Sophy, softened; “but, when Mary Minturn goes, I
shall sleep alone; and you know, when there were
two of us, we never liked David's having to pass
through our room to get to his.”

“Oh, I understand now—but indeed, Sophy, it is
too absurd and old maidish! Such a respectable
man as David!”

“I know that, Mrs. Ardley—and that is why we
have submitted to it so long—but I do not think it
will be suitable when I am alone. You ladies are
fenced and guarded on every side; poor folks must
take care of themselves.”

“Well, Sophy, I thought you was one that was
above changing for every trifle.”

“I have borne a good many disagreeable trifles
for two years rather than change, Mrs. Ardley;
but my mind is made up now.”

Had Mrs. Ardley thought it worth while any
time within the preceding two years to have had a
door cut from David's room to the passage-way (an
improvement that would not have been deferred a
day, if females of her own grade had occupied Sophy's
department), she would have attached Sophy
by an attention that expressed respect, and would
probably have secured her valuable services.[1] Not

warned by her ill success, she proceeded in her
work of reform. “Ferris,” she said, when Ferris
came to take the bill of fare for dinner, “Ferris,
I feel it to be my duty to speak to you about your
habits.”

Ferris was by birth an Englishwoman, and she
retained somewhat of the deferential un-American
manners of her early years.

“Thank you, madam,” she replied; “and in
what don't my habits suit, madam?”

“You know, of course, what I mean, Ferris.”

“Indeed, Mrs. Ardley, I am as ignorant as the
babe unborn.”

“Then, candidly, Ferris, I tell you I fear you
drink too much.”

“Indeed, Mrs. Ardley, there's been a foul tongue
between us. I am not in the least fond of drink.”

“Do you not drink spirits every day, Ferris?”

“Indeed, madam, I tell you the living truth—I
just take the weakest of weakly toddy, to take off
the 'fect of the dinner-steam, for medicine like.
But as to drinking, there's not the woman soberer
than I in the city.”

Mrs. Ardley smiled at the hardihood of this assertion;
but she thought it most politic not to express
in direct terms her incredulity, so she said, good-humouredly,
“I hope you will persevere in sober
habits, Ferris, for intemperance is very foolish and
very wicked. And pray, Ferris, don't burn another
bedspread!”

“Did ye think it was me, Mrs. Ardley, and just

because I would not tell on that child—you know
Lucy is like mad for a book.”

“I have observed she is fond of reading.”

“That's what I call a habit in a servant; but,
poor thing, she's young. And when she went to
sleep and left the candle burning, and waked in a
fright just as I came in to bed, maybe she did not
just know who did it.”

“Well, Ferris, we'll see she does not burn a
light after she goes to bed — so, if anything happens
again, you know you must bear the blame.” Ferris
learned her own importance by seeing that her
mistress was willing to appear duped, and Mrs.
Ardley stifled the reproaches of conscience for
tolerating drunkenness, and its consequent lying
and injustice, by saying, “I have spoken to her—
what can I do more?”

Are not the virtues and vices of domestics too often
requited, not in proportion to their desert, but according
to their effect on the convenience of their employers?

Mrs. Ardley was under a strong impulse, and
she proceeded in that most delicate of all operations
—reform. “Mary Minturn,” she said, “I perceive
that you are getting uneasy, like all the girls.”

Mary Minturn was suffering from debility and
loss of spirits, the almost certain consequence of
too close a confinement to a sedentary employment.
She burst into tears. “Don't be troubled, Mary;
I did not mean to reproach you,” resumed Mrs.
Ardley; “servants are always fancying they shall
like some other work better than that they are doing
—it's the old story; each one is eager to lay down
his particular burden, and glad enough to take it

up again; I was not the least offended; if you had
seriously proposed going away, I should, to be sure,
have thought you very absurd and ungrateful.”

“Indeed, indeed, Mrs. Ardley, I am not ungrateful—but—”

“But what? Surely you do not in earnest mean
to leave me?”

“I must, ma'am. The doctor says I am getting
a liver complaint, and I can never be cured if I
don't take to some stirring work.”

“Pshaw, Mary, how absurd! You have been
to some goose of a doctor. It is a great deal harder
to do `stirring work,' as you call it, than to sit at
your needle. I will speak to Doctor Smith about
you. You know I have always told you that you
might have our own physician free of expense.”

“Thank you, ma'am, but I am sure my own
doctor is right. He says he will not impose medicine
on me; it will only make the matter worse,
and I feel what he says to be true.”

“And you really mean to leave me?”

“I must, Mrs. Ardley.”

“Well, you must do as you think fit, but I doubt
if you find a better place.”

Mary was silent; her tears still flowed; there
was something like a taunt in Mrs. Ardley's words,
and still more in her manner, which repressed the
expression of the gratitude Mary deeply felt for all
the indulgences and kindness she had received at
Mrs. Ardley's hand; and the lady left her with the
conviction that, as she soon after said to a friend,
“Mary Minturn was just like all other servant-girls;
let Sara Hyde say what she will, they are an ungrateful
pack. Mr. Ardley and I have made Mary

Minturn presents upon presents. I have never
counted her lost days, and I have never spoken a
harsh word to her, and now she is going away
when she knows how important she is to me, just
because some absurd doctor has put it into her head
that sewing don't agree with her!”

If Mrs. Ardley had understood the first principles
of physiology, and she was perfectly capable of
comprehending them, and if she had felt the duties
of her station, and applied these principles to the
persons cast upon her care, Mary Minturn would
not have lost her health, and they might have continued
to the end of their lives to live together with
reciprocal benefit, instead of parting with smothered
reproaches on the one side for slighted favours,
and smothered gratitude on the other for the exercise
of virtues that, after all, were merely virtues of
constitution.

After one or two other abortive attempts at reform,
Mrs. Ardley reverted to her old mode of sailing
with the current, and letting things take their
own way, “Convinced,” she said, “there was no
use in trying to have matters too perfect.”

Our conclusion is, that old abuses in families, as
in states, are not of sudden or easy reform.