“Buy!” said Sally, “why should you? There’s dinner enough here for these children, with bread, and that you’ve got plenty of. But I know you don’t want no smell of cookin’ under your nose, so the children can come and play with Louis; and by and by I’ll send you over some tea and toast.” The beef, potatoes, and onion, chopped up into an iron skillet, covered with water, and re-enforced by a spoonful of turnips and the remains of a can of tomatoes, which Sally had been keeping for some occasion when they would “come in handy,” produced, at the end of twenty minutes, a very savory stew, to which the children did ample justice. But the tea and toast which after a while Sally carried in to her neighbor became the occasion of such sighs over the days when Frau Anna had made her own bread, and her children had had wholesome food to eat, that it resulted, a day or two later, in an offer from Polly to bake for Frau Anna along with themselves. “And I don’t see why I shouldn’t do your cooking, all of it,” said Polly. “Sally keeps such a strict account of all we spend that she could tell in a minute what you ought to pay.” “The cost of the things in market, and maybe a little extra to Mr. Metzerott for the fire,” said Sally. “I used to be quick at figures, Mis’ Rolf; and if I ain’t forgot how, I’ll cipher it out, and let you know. You needn’t be afraid we’ll cheat you, or make anything out of you; we’ve been made too much out of ourselves.” But when it was also arranged that they should do Frau Anna’s washing, Sally concluded that they might give up their work at Grind and Crushem’s. “And how it feels to be free again, you won’t never know, Mr. Metzerott,” she said, when the deed had been done. “Now I want to know,” said Karl, looking up from his work with a quizzical smile, “what’s the difference between the way you’re living now and domestic service. Wouldn’t it have been better to live out with some rich person, who would have paid good wages, than to work for Grind and Crushem?” “Maybe it would,” said Sally thoughtfully. “Hired girls do get good wages, that’s so.” “It’s your American independence,” said Metzerott. “You don’t find German girls willing to starve rather than live out.” “There wasn’t much independence at _our_ shop,” answered Sally dryly. “I don’t know why it is, Mr. Metzerott, but American girls won’t live out ef they can do anything else; or ef they do, they feel kinder degraded, and it makes ‘em so uppish and contrary there’s no livin’ in the house with ‘em. I’ve seen ‘em real sassy, just because they felt lowered in their own eyes.” “They were fools!” said Metzerott briefly. “What is there in honest work to degrade any one?”