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Cinda with a smile. The temptation was irresistible. She had an empty tray in her hand, and lowering it suddenly, said, "I guess, miss, them 'ere beads of your'n cost considerable." The younger ladies thrust their pocket-handkerchiefs into their mouths, and the elder ones stared, while Cinda, catching my eye, and perceiving a frown, cried out, "Lud, Miss Packard, if I ain't spoke in the party;" and then, with a look of greater horror, "Lud, lud, I've spoke agin!" then catching up the tray, she retreated in confusion.

It was impossible for the most rigid muscles to refrain from laughter. The shouts reached poor Cinda's ears in her culinary domain, and it required all the inducements I could urge to prevail on her to carry the tray again.

Curiosity, which seemed to be her master-
passion, prompted her to try on the garments of
others. A French lady from St. Domingo, for
whom Edward was employed in a law-suit,
with me. Her dress
came to pass a few days
was fashionable in the extreme. It was Cin-

da's province to arrange the bed-rooms while we breakfasted. Mam'selle Ligne had occasion to leave the table one morning in quest of her handkerchief, and her light step was unperceived by Cinda, who stood before the glass. She had placed on her carroty locks Mam'selle Ligne's beautiful evening cap, and thrown a slight scarf over her shoulders; and there she stood, with an air of the most complacent satisfaction, gazing at her own charms. The joke was too good to be lost. Mam'selle tripped down, and asking Edward and myself to follow, we all went up softly, ignorant of what we were to behold.

Human gravity could not hold out at such a spectacle. Edward gave one of those laughs through his nose that always sound louder than a natural one, and poor Cinda started in dismay at beholding us. She took off the scarf in her hurry, but forgot the cap, which was of a very light material, and began making up the bed with great zeal.

Just at this crisis the butcher knocked at the

outer door, and Cinda, glad to escape, raced down, cap and all, to receive him. "Holla, Cinda," said he, "are you setting that 'ere cap at me?" This was too much for Cinda's nerves. She caught up the leg of lamb he had extended to her, and running into the kitchen, hid her blushes in her check apron.

CHAPTER V.

LUCY COOLEDGE.

Servitude is honour, not

Disgrace, when falling fortunes make it needful.

GOETHE. Herman and Dorothea.

CINDA blundered through ten months in my service, sometimes fretting and sometimes amusing me with her oddities, before her curiosity and love of change induced her to leave me. At length, with some little emotion, she announced her intention of removing.

"I know, Miss Packard," said she, "that you'll miss me more than enough; such a bird is not to be caught on every bough. "Tisn't everybody that has my knack at thrashing about among the pots and kettles. I'm not the person that holds a frying-pan with white gloves on. But I've a notion to see a little more of the world. Miss Bachelor is going out to Roxbury to live, and I'm to try how she suits me a

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spell. Howsomever, as I don't want to leave you without nobody, Mr. Tucker, the butcher, says one Lucy Cooledge is in petickelar want of a sitivation, being as how old Miss Amory died two weeks ago, and ain't left her no provision."

On the following morning I had a conversation with Mr. Tucker about Lucy Cooledge. The narration interested me, though I drew the inference that she would not be as dexterous in

thrashing about among the pots and kettles" as her predecessor. She had been adopted in orphan-infancy by Mrs. Amory, and educated as well as her slender means would permit. The tendency of her teaching, it appeared, was to form a religious character, and cultivate great original sensibility in her young charge. For two years, Mrs. Amory had been lingering with a chronic affection, and left Lucy, at the age of seventeen, without a shelter, except from the charity of neighbours.

"It was a crying sight," said Mr. Tucker, "to see the poor thing the day Mrs. Amory

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