“Don’t you think they’ve got immortal souls?” said Miss Ophelia, with increasing indignation.

“O, well,” said Marie, yawning, “that, of course—nobody doubts that. But as to putting them on any sort of equality with us, you know, as if we could be compared, why, it’s impossible! Now, St. Clare really has talked to me as if keeping Mammy from her husband was like keeping me from mine. There’s no comparing in this way. Mammy couldn’t have the feelings that I should. It’s a different thing altogether,—of course, it is,—and yet St. Clare pretends not to see it. And just as if Mammy could love her little dirty babies as I love Eva! Yet St. Clare once really and soberly tried to persuade me that it was my duty, with my weak health, and all I suffer, to let Mammy go back, and take somebody else in her place. That was a little too much even for me to bear. I don’t often show my feelings, I make it a principle to endure everything in silence; it’s a wife’s hard lot, and I bear it. But I did break out, that time; so that he has never alluded to the subject since. But I know by his looks, and little things that he says, that he thinks so as much as ever; and it’s so trying, so provoking!”

Miss Ophelia looked very much as if she was afraid she should say something; but she rattled away with her needles in a way that had volumes of meaning in it, if Marie could only have understood it.

“So, you just see,” she continued, “what you’ve got to manage. A household without any rule; where servants have it all their own way, do what they please, and have what they please, except so far as I, with my feeble health, have kept up government. I keep my cowhide about, and sometimes I do lay it on; but the exertion is always too much for me. If St. Clare would only have this thing done as others do—”

“And how’s that?”

“Why, send them to the calaboose, or some of the other places to be flogged. That’s the only way. If I wasn’t such a poor, feeble piece, I believe I should manage with twice the energy that St. Clare does.”

“And how does St. Clare contrive to manage?” said Miss Ophelia. “You say he never strikes a blow.”

“Well, men have a more commanding way, you know; it is easier for them; besides, if you ever looked full in his eye, it’s peculiar,—that eye,—and if he speaks decidedly, there’s a kind of flash. I’m afraid of it, myself; and the servants know they must mind. I couldn’t do as much by a regular storm and scolding as St. Clare can by one turn of his eye, if once he is in earnest. O, there’s no trouble about St. Clare; that’s the reason he’s no more feeling for me. But you’ll find, when you come to manage, that there’s no getting along without severity,—they are so bad, so deceitful, so lazy”.

“The old tune,” said St. Clare, sauntering in. “What an awful account these wicked creatures will have to settle, at last, especially for being lazy! You see, cousin,” said he, as he stretched himself at full length on a lounge opposite to Marie, “it’s wholly inexcusable in them, in the light of the example that Marie and I set them,—this laziness.”

“Come, now, St. Clare, you are too bad!” said Marie.

“Am I, now? Why, I thought I was talking good, quite remarkably for me. I try to enforce your remarks, Marie, always.”

“You know you meant no such thing, St. Clare,” said Marie.

“O, I must have been mistaken, then. Thank you, my dear, for setting me right.”

“You do really try to be provoking,” said Marie.

“O, come, Marie, the day is growing warm, and I have just had a long quarrel with Dolph, which has fatigued me excessively; so, pray be agreeable, now, and let a fellow repose in the light of your smile.”