Ethel made cake so that she could be in the kitchen. I did not exactly approve of it, because the day was meant to be spent in the open, and I wanted to swing hammocks out in the pine woods and read a new novel which had been recommended to me as excellent for reading aloud, but I well knew the wisdom of getting Minerva started right, and I dare say that Ethel’s amiable conversation made her forget that the cook on the “other side of the hall” was nearly two hundred miles away. At lunch time, Ethel looked very much heated and worn, and I said to myself, “Better me in the kitchen making impossible cake and regaling Minerva with anecdotes than Ethel neutralizing all the effects of this delicious country air in her efforts to keep our cook contented.” So, after lunch, I put up the hammocks and then I insisted on Ethel’s taking her embroidery and coming out to the woods. “And what will Minerva do? She is afraid of the crickets, and I dare not leave her all the afternoon alone until she is acclimated.” “No, of course she can’t be left. I didn’t intend her to be left. I will go and learn how to make bread, or, better still, I will paint the floor. Doesn’t the floor need painting?” “Now, Philip, don’t be foolish. Of course you can’t stay in the kitchen. It’s no place for a man—” “Nor is it any place for a woman who has come to the country for her health. And yet Minerva won’t stay here alone. What’s to be done?” Ethel thought a minute and then said: “I have some plain sewing that I want done and Minerva is very handy with her needle. She makes all her own clothes. She shall come to the pine woods with us and sew a fine seam until it’s time to start dinner, and then we can go back to the house and sit on the piazza. It’s not as pleasant as the woods, but we’ll be within ear call.” This seemed preposterous, but if I disapproved and Minerva left, Ethel would be apt to blame me, so I consented and we all went to the grove, like a happy family of three. I read out loud from the new novel, but I don’t think that Minerva cared much for it, because when Miss Pussy, who had accompanied us, brought a bird and laid it at her mistress’ feet, Minerva broke right into my reading with: “Why, Mis. Vernon, Miss Pussy has a bird, and it ain’t a sparrer an’ it ain’t a canary. What other kinds is there?”