“Where is Maria?” asked Captain Miltiades.
“In the kitchen, of course, cooking the breakfast.”
“Yes, sir,” cried the unfortunate servant, rushing from the steaming _pilaf_ she was preparing, and showing a spacious bosom hardly restrained within the compass of the strained and long since colourless cloth that untidily covered it, and a ragged skirt, and fuzzy black hair that she found as much difficulty in keeping out of the soup as out of her own coal-black eyes--only far greater effort was made to accomplish the latter feat.
“Maria, the balls are commencing, and I shall be going out regularly; you must have two clean shirts for me every day. Do you hear?”
“And how on earth do you think, Captain, I am to get through my work? Two shirts a day indeed! And the same for Mr. Themistocles, I suppose. Four bedrooms to see to, cooking, washing for five persons: and one poor girl to do it all for twenty-five francs a month. You may look for another servant.”
“Get away, or I’ll wring your ear, Maria. You have Theodore to help you in the kitchen, and you know that both my mother and Andromache help you in the housework.”
“Wonderful, indeed! It only wants every one in the house to sit down and do nothing, and the young ladies to ask me to starch them two white petticoats apiece every day. Ah, animals, pigs, the whole of you,” she added as she retired to the kitchen, and the gallant Captain to his chamber.
Another masculine entrance, and this time the thin piping voice of little Themistocles was heard, calling on the unhappy maid of all work.
“What does this fool want now?” roared the infuriated Maria, appearing in the corridor with a large spoon which she brandished menacingly.
“I am going out this evening, Maria, and I want a second clean shirt,” said Themistocles, thrusting his head out of his room.
“A second clean shirt! Oh, of course. What else? Don’t you think, sir, you might find something more for me to do? I have so very little to do that it would really be a kindness to keep an idle girl in work. Clean shirts for Miltiades, clean shirts for Themistocles. ’Pon my word, it is poor Maria herself who wants clean shirts--and she has not even time to wash her face!”
“Really, it is absurd the trouble you men give in a house,” cried Julia over her embroidery in the hall. “You seem to think there are no limits to what a servant is to be asked to do.”