"Never. I meant to try again, an' register the letter, so as to be sure that it got into the right hands, but somethin' kept tellin' me 'twas time to get back home. But if you'll let me make a trip again next fall, at my own expense, I'll try for better luck. Anyway, I'll work the corn-meal plan on Liverpool an' other cities, an' if it takes as well as it's done in London, 'twon't be long before a good many thousan's of bushels of Claybanks corn'll be saved from the distilleries, in the course of a year." "Phil," Grace remarked, "Caleb's wish to go abroad in the fall reminds me that I want you to take me East for a few weeks in the spring, and we ought to begin our preparations at once. As 'tis near Christmas, Mary and I have been talking of presents, and particularly of one which you and Caleb can join in giving us and at the same time secure to yourselves more of the business and social companionship of your wives. We want a housekeeper." "Sensible women!" Philip replied. "As to your husbands, they will be delighted--eh, Caleb? If it weren't that servants can't be had in this part of the country, and help, after the Claybanks manner, would have banished all sense of privacy, I should think myself a villain of deepest dye for having allowed the wife of the principal merchant of Claybanks to cook my meals and do all the remaining work of the house, and I don't doubt that Caleb feels similarly about Mary." "Well," said Caleb, "work that wa'n't degradin' to my dear mother oughtn't to seem too mean for my wife; but, on the other hand, my mother shouldn't have done it if I could have helped it, 'specially if she'd have tried also to do a full day's clerk-work in a store once in ev'ry twenty-four hours." "That explains our position," Grace added. "You two men are so full of new business of various kinds that Mary and I should be in the store all the while. Soon that dreadful pork-house must open for the season, and then we shall see less of you than ever. A good housekeeper will cost no more than a good clerk, and we must have one or the other. We don't want a clerk, if we can avoid it; at present we have the business entirely in our own hands, and when there are no customers in the store, we have as much privacy and freedom as if we were in the house. Mary knows a good woman in New York who will be glad to come here as maid-of-all-work, if she may be called housekeeper instead of servant; she has a grown son who wishes to be a farmer and to begin where land is cheaper and richer than it is in the vicinity of New York. With such a woman to care for the house we can spend most of our time in the store, hold the trade of such womenfolk as deal with us, and try to get the remainder; for where women and their daughters buy, the husband and brothers will also go."