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“Can't you let our folks have some eggs?” said Daniel Webster
Larkins, opening the door, and putting in a little straw-coloured
head and a pair of very mild blue eyes just far enough to reconnoitre;
“can't you let our folks have some eggs? Our old
hen don't lay nothing but chickens now, and mother can't eat
pork, and she a'n't had no breakfast, and the baby a'n't drest,
nor nothin'!”

“What is the matter, Webster? Where's your girl?”

“Oh! we ha'n't no girl but father, and he's had to go 'way to-day
to a raisin'—and mother wants to know if you can't tell her
where to get a girl?”

Poor Mrs. Larkins! Her husband makes but an indifferent
“girl,” being a remarkable public-spirited person. The good
lady is in very delicate health, and having an incredible number
of little blue eyes constantly making fresh demands upon her
time and strength, she usually keeps a girl when she can get one.
When she cannot, which is unfortunately the larger part of the
time, her husband dresses the children—mixes stir-cakes for the
eldest blue eyes to bake on a griddle, which is never at rest—
milks the cow—feeds the pigs—and then goes to his “business,”
which we have supposed to consist principally in helping at raisings,
wood-bees, huskings, and such like important affairs; and

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“girl” hunting—the most important and arduous, and profitless
of all.

Yet it must be owned that Mr. Larkins is a tolerable carpenter,
and that he buys as many comforts for his family as most of his
neighbours. The main difficulty seems to be that “help” is not
often purchasable. The very small portion of our damsels who
will consent to enter anybody's doors for pay, makes the chase
after them quite interesting from its uncertainty; and the damsels
themselves, subject to a well known foible of their sex, become
very coy from being over-courted. Such racing and chasing,
and begging and praying, to get a girl for a month! They are
often got for life with half the trouble. But to return.

Having an esteem for Mrs. Larkins, and a sincere experimental
pity for the forlorn condition of “no girl but father,” I set out at
once to try if female tact and perseverance might not prove effectual
in ferreting out a “help,” though mere industry had not succeeded.
For this purpose I made a list in my mind of those
neighbours, in the first place, whose daughters sometimes condescended
to be girls; and, secondly, of the few who were enabled
by good luck, good management, and good pay, to keep them. If
I failed in my attempts upon one class, I hoped for somenew lights
from the other. When the object is of such importance, it is
well to string one's bow double.

In the first category stood Mrs. Lowndes, whose forlorn log-house
had never known door or window; a blanket supplying the
place of the one, and the other being represented by a crevice
between the logs. Lifting the sooty curtain with some timidity, I
found the dame with a sort of reel before her, trying to wind
some dirty, tangled yarn; and ever and anon kicking at a basket
which hung suspended from the beam overhead by means of a
strip of hickory bark. This basket contained a nest of rags and
an indescribable baby; and in the ashes on the rough hearth
played several dingy objects, which I suppose had once been babies.

“Is your daughter at home now, Mrs. Lowndes?”

“Well, yes! M'randy's to hum, but she's out now. Did you
want her?”

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“I came to see if she could go to Mrs. Larkins, who is very
unwell, and sadly in want of help.”

“Miss Larkins! why, do tell! I want to know! Is she sick
agin? and is her gal gone? Why! I want to know! I thought
she had Lo-i-sy Paddon! Is Lo-i-sy gone?”

“I suppose so. You will let Miranda go to Mrs. Larkins, will
you?”

“Well, I donnow but I would let her go for a spell, just to
'commodate 'em. M'randy may go if she's a mind ter. She
needn't live out unless she chooses. She's got a comfortable
home, and no thanks to nobody. What wages do they give?”

“A dollar a week.”

“Eat at the table?”

“Oh! certainly.”

“Have Sundays?”

“Why no—I believe not the whole of Sunday—the children,
you know—”

“Oh ho!” interrupted Mrs. Lowndes, with a most disdainful
toss of the head, giving at the same time a vigorous impulse to
the cradle, “if that's how it is, M'randy don't stir a step! She
don't live nowhere if she can't come home Saturday night and
stay till Monday morning.”

I took my leave without farther parley, having often found this
point the sine qua non in such negotiations.

My next effort was at a pretty-looking cottage, whose overhanging
roof and neat outer arrangements, spoke of English
ownership. The interior by no means corresponded with the
exterior aspect, being even more bare than usual, and far from
neat. The presiding power was a prodigious creature, who looked
like a man in woman's clothes, and whose blazing face, ornamented
here and there by great hair moles, spoke very intelligibly
of the beer-barrel, if of nothing more exciting. A daughter
of this virago had once lived in my family, and the mother met
me with an air of defiance, as if she thought I had come with an
accusation. When I unfolded my errand, her abord softened a
little, but she scornfully rejected the idea of her Lucy living with
any more Yankees.

“You pretend to think everybody alike,” said she, “but when

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it comes to the pint, you're a sight more uppish and saucy than
the ra'al quality at home; and I'll see the whole Yankee race
to —”

I made my exit without waiting for the conclusion of this complimentary
observation; and the less reluctantly for having observed
on the table the lower part of one of my silver teaspoons, the
top of which had been violently wrenched off. This spoon was
a well-remembered loss during Lucy's administration, and I knew
that Mrs. Larkins had none to spare.

Unsuccessful thus far among the arbiters of our destiny, I
thought I would stop at the house of a friend, and make some inquiries
which might spare me farther rebuffs. On making my
way by the garden gate to the little library where I usually
saw Mrs. Stayner, I was surprised to find it silent and uninhabited.
The windows were closed; a half-finished cap lay on the
sofa, and a bunch of yesterday's wild-flowers upon the table. All
spoke of desolation. The cradle—not exactly an appropriate adjunct
of a library scene elsewhere, but quite so at the West—
was gone, and the little rocking-chair was nowhere to be seen. I
went on through parlour and hall, finding no sign of life, save the
breakfast-table still standing with crumbs undisturbed. Where
bells are not known, ceremony is out of the question; so I penetrated
even to the kitchen, where at length I caught sight of the
fair face of my friend. She was bending over the bread-tray,
and at the same time telling nursery-stories as fast as possible, by
way of coaxing her little boy of four years old to rock the cradle
which contained his baby sister.

“What does this mean?”

“Oh! nothing more than usual. My Polly took herself off
yesterday without a moment's warning, saying she thought she had
lived out about long enough; and poor Tom, our factotum, has
the ague. Mr. Stayner has gone to some place sixteen miles off,
where he was told he might hear of a girl, and I am sole representative
of the family energies. But you've no idea what capital
bread I can make.”

This looked rather discouraging for my quest; but knowing
that the main point of table-companionship was the source of
most of Mrs. Stayner's difficulties, I still hoped for Mrs. Larkins,

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who loved the closest intimacy with her “help,” and always took
them visiting with her. So I passed on for another effort at Mrs.
Randall's, whose three daughters had sometimes been known to
lay aside their dignity long enough to obtain some much-coveted
article of dress. Here the mop was in full play; and Mrs. Randall,
with her gown turned up, was splashing diluted mud on the
walls and furniture, in the received mode of these regions, where
“stained-glass windows” are made without a patent. I did not
venture in, but asked from the door, with my best diplomacy,
whether Mrs. Randall knew of a girl.

“A gal! no; who wants a gal?”

“Mrs. Larkins.”

“She! why don't she get up and do her own work?”

“She is too feeble.”

“Law sakes! too feeble! she'd be able as anybody to thrash
round, if her old man didn't spile her by waitin' on—”

We think Mrs. Larkins deserves small blame on this score.

“But, Mrs. Randall, the poor woman is really ill and unable
to do anything for her children. Couldn't you spare Rachel for
a few days to help her?”

This was said in a most guarded and deprecatory tone, and
with a manner carefully moulded between indifference and undue
solicitude.

“My gals has got enough to do. They a'n't able to do their
own work. Cur'line hasn't been worth the fust red cent for hard
work ever since she went to school to A—.”

“Oh! I did not expect to get Caroline. I understand she is
going to get married.”

“What! to Bill Green! She wouldn't let him walk where
she walked last year!”

Here I saw I had made a misstep. Resolving to be more cautious,
I left the selection to the lady herself, and only begged for
one of the girls. But my eloquence was wasted. The Miss
Randalls had been a whole quarter at a select school, and will
not live out again until their present stock of finery is unwearable.
Miss Rachel, whose company I had hoped to secure, was
even then paying attention to a branch of the fine arts.

“Rachel Amandy!” cried Mrs. Randall at the foot of the

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ladder which gave access to the upper regions—“fetch that thing
down here! It's the prettiest thing you ever see in your life!”
turning to me. And the educated young lady brought down a
doleful-looking compound of card-board and many-coloured waters,
which had, it seems, occupied her mind and fingers for some
days.

“There!” said the mother, proudly, “a gal that's learnt to
make sich baskets as that, a'n't a goin' to be nobody's help, I
guess!”

I thought the boast likely to be verified as a prediction, and
went my way, crestfallen and weary. Girl-hunting is certainly
among our most formidable “chores.”

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