Somewhat tired at length with her rambles, she returned to the house, and now, for the first time, faint shadows of reality rested upon love’s romance. She was surprised to find the rooms in the same disorder she had left them—her trunks were yet unpacked, and the chamber strewed with all the litter of traveling. She wondered if the maid would never come to arrange things—it was certainly very shocking to have no place to sit down, properly in order. She looked for a bell—she might as well have looked for a fairy wand to summon the delinquent housemaid. That she could do any thing toward a more agreeable _at-home-ness_ was a fact which did not occur to her; so she threw herself upon the sofa, resolving to wait patiently the appearance of the servant. In the pages of a new novel she had already lost her chagrin, when the door was suddenly thrown wide open, and a tall, strapping girl—how unlike the Hebe of her imagination!—putting her head into the room, exclaimed,— “Well, aint you coming to get up dinner, I should like to know; the pot biles, and _he_’ll be here in a minute, for it’s e’en a’most noon!” “Who are you speaking to?” said Anna. “You must be smart, _Miss_ Forbes, to ask that! Why, I guess, I’m speaking to you; I don’t see nobody else. Maybe you don’t know it’s washing-day; and I aint used to cooking and doing every thing on such days, I can tell you!” Anna had good sense enough to know that the girl did not mean to be impertinent, so she answered mildly, “Very well, I will come.” And putting down her book, she followed her into the kitchen. Kitty immediately resumed her station at the wash-tub, leaving her young mistress to solve alone the mysteries of that glowing fire-place, and heedless of her presence, struck up a song, pitching her voice to its highest key, and in the energy of her independence, splashing and swashing the glittering suds far above her head. Poor Anna looked around despairingly. What was _she_ to do—what _could_ she do! There was the pot boiling, fast enough, to be sure; so fast that the brown heads of the potatoes came bobbing up spitefully against the lid, as if determined to break through every obstacle in the way of their rising ambition. There, too, was a piece of meat, raw and unseemly, stretched out upon a certain machine, ycleped a gridiron, by old housekeepers, yet of whose use or properties Anna was sadly at fault. To extricate herself from her embarrassment she knew she must first crave light, so feeling as if about to address some pythoness of those mysterious realms, she humbly demanded,— “Well, Kitty, what can I do?” “Do—I guess you’d better lift off that pot pretty quick, _Miss_ Forbes, or the ’taters will be all biled to smash!” Lift off that pot—that great, heavy iron pot! _She! Anna!_ whose delicate hands had never scarcely felt a feather’s weight! Anna was confounded. “I wish you would do it for me,” she said.