MARTA, unpromising as her appearance was, had shown considerable aptitude for cooking, but about the house generally she was rather hopeless. She had succeeded already in breaking two of the pretty ornaments Molly had on her bureau, and therefore the latter had decided to trust her to touch nothing that required careful handling. She was hopelessly mixed, too, about laying the table. The breakfast was laid as for dinner, and _vice versa_, and the result was that Molly did not depend on her to do either, it being easier to do them herself. When she had kept house a few years longer she learnt that to do things herself was, in spite of the proverb, the way _not_ to get them done well by any one else. But the trouble was so slight she did not think it worth while to struggle against it. She meant to have exactly the same dinner as last Tuesday, only she had shoulder of lamb roasted instead of breast. She stood by while Marta cut the shoulder out, and then read over the recipe for tomato soup, and lemon pie, pastry for which was left from the chicken pie made on Saturday, and then left her to cook the dinner alone, while she went to Mrs. Lennox according to her promise. She found that lady busy ironing. She looked white and exhausted, and yet there was a large pile of little clothes all trimmed by the mother’s industrious fingers, and, alas, trimmed so much. Yet who could not understand a mother’s desire to see her children dressed prettily, when it cost only a few hours more time, a little more fatigue to make them so? and how few are able to blend beauty and strict simplicity, although when it is blended the result is more charming than any dictate of fashion? “Let me help you iron for an hour. We need not begin cooking just yet, if you saved the mutton broth, as there is no gravy to make.” “Yes, I saved it, but you mustn’t think of ironing,—please don’t.” “I’d like it. I am not expert, but every little helps, and your instruction will do me good. Let me go on with that ruffle, while you get something I can’t do. My Marta is ironing to-day, but by the look of things I’m afraid I shall have to learn, myself, in order to teach her, if she proves teachable.” “Ironing I have learned to do pretty well from necessity. I only wish I had been brought up to do everything, it would all have come so much easier to me.” “But it seems to me you can do so many things well,” said Molly. “You sew so beautifully, and this ironing would shame most people who have been brought up to do it.” “Yes, I can do anything I make up my mind to do; so can most people, I think.” “Yes, and that is why if an educated woman is forced into unaccustomed fields of work she does it better than those who are professedly working-women,—better in every case where sinew is not the chief desideratum.” “Only,” rejoined Mrs. Lennox, “she works with brains and hands too, and that is why the work tires her so much more than those who work mechanically.”