AT the last minute we learned that the girl we had counted upon to do our cooking at Clover Lodge had scarlet fever, and as she was the only local girl that we could hire—New England girls preferring to work in a “shop” to domestic service—we were at our wits’ end. In our extremity Mrs. Vernon (my wife) made a last appeal to Minerva. She went into the kitchen of our New York flat and said, “Minerva, Mamie Logan, the girl we expected to have up at Clover Lodge, has scarlet fever.” Minerva was blacking the stove (as I could see from the dining room), but she stopped and turned around as she always did when her mistress spoke to her, and said “Yas’m.” “Well, do you know what that means, Minerva?” “Means she’s sick, ma’am.” “Yes, but it also means that I haven’t anybody to cook for me up there.” “Yas’m.” “Well, don’t you think you could go up if we gave you five dollars a month more than you’re getting now?” Minerva rubbed her already black arm with the blacking brush in an absent-minded sort of way as she said, “’Deed I hate the country. It’s so dismal.” _I_ would have given up trying to get her to come then, as her tone sounded final to me, but Mrs. Vernon caught a gleam of willingness in her expression, and she said, “Some country places may be doleful, Minerva, but Clover Lodge is in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and there’s a light kitchen and you can take ‘Miss Pussy,’ you know. I’m sure you’ll like it and the work won’t be as hard as it is here and there’s lots of fresh air. And I’ll lend you books to read. If you won’t come we’ll have to give up going, as I won’t take a stranger up from the city.” “Yas’m,” said Minerva, turning to the stove and beginning to use the brush again. “Well, will you go, Minerva?” “Yas’m.” “Oh, you dear good thing,” said my wife, and I fully expected her to hug Minerva. She came in to where I was finishing my second cup of coffee and said, “Minerva is a jewel. She’s going up. Do you know, in some ways it’s better than if we had Mamie Logan because Minerva is a much better cook and she won’t have any beaux from the village to make a noise in the kitchen in the evening—” “No, but you may have to import beaux from Thompson Street to solace her loneliness,” said I. “If I know the kind at all, Minerva will die one day away from New York.” “Nonsense,” said Ethel. “She can’t help falling in love with the view from the kitchen windows. That lovely old purple Mount Nebo.”