school-quarrels and household economy: the cookery was not to her taste—the people about her, teachers and pupils, she held to be despicable, because they were foreigners. I bore with her abuse of the Friday's salt fish and hard eggs—with her invective against the soup, the bread, the coffee—with some patience for a time; but at last, wearied by iteration, I turned crusty and put her to rights—a thing I ought to have done in the very beginning, for a salutary setting down always agreed with her.
Much longer had I to endure her demands on me in the way of work. Her wardrobe, so far as concerned articles of external wear, was well and elegantly supplied; but there were other habiliments not so carefully provided: what she had, needed frequent repair. She hated needle-drudgery herself, and she would bring her hose, &c., to me in heaps, to be mended. A compliance of some weeks threatening to result in the establishment of an intolerable bore—I at last distinctly told her she must make up her mind to mend her own garments. She cried on receiving this information, and accused me of having ceased to become her friend; but I held my decision, and let the hysterics pass as they could.
Notwithstanding these foibles, and various others needless to mention—but by no means of a refined or elevating character—how pretty she was! How charming she looked, when she came down on a sunny Sunday morning, well-dressed and well-humored, robed in pale lilac silk, and with her fair long curls reposing on her white shoulders. Sunday was a holiday which she always passed with friends resident in town; and amongst these friends she speedily gave me to understand was one who would fain become something more. By glimpses and hints it was shown me, and by the general buoyancy of her look and manner it was ere long proved that ardent admiration—perhaps genuine love—was at her command. She called her suitor "Isidore": this, however, she intimated was not his real name, but one by which it pleased her to baptize him—his own, she hinted, not being "very pretty". Once, when she had been bragging about the vehemence of "Isidore's" attachment, I asked if she loved him in return.
"Comme cela", said she: "he is handsome, and he loves me to distraction, so that I am well amused. Ca suffit".
