Ten Dollars Enough: Keeping House Well on Ten Dollars a Week: How It Has Been Done; How It May Be Done AgainOwen, Catherine
General
Ten Dollars Enough: Keeping House Well on Ten Dollars a Week: How It Has Been Done; How It May Be Done Again
Owen, Catherine
Cost and standard of living; Home economics
“Never mind, we’ll have such a good time now, that we won’t think of
anything else.”
“What time is your Gretchen to arrive?”
“Not Gretchen, but Marta. She came an hour ago, while you were seeing
to the baggage, and is busy down stairs, where I must go to her if we
are to have any lunch, while you put your books in order.”
“Oh, lunch! Never mind lunch to-day, bread and cheese will do”—
“Oh, no!” said Molly, shaking her head and laughing, “I’ve brought you
from the land of abundance; I must take care that you are not made to
suffer the first day.”
Marta, Molly’s servant, was a newly arrived German girl whom she had
had the courage to take from Castle Garden.
“She will be as green as grass, Molly,” Harry had said.
“Yes, I know, but at least it is better she should know nothing than
know how to do things badly; it is easier to teach than to unteach.”
“All right, my dear, we will go to Castle Garden, then, and interview a
new arrival from Germany.”
They did so, and found a thick, short, strong, but stupid-looking girl
was the only one whom it seemed possible to take into the house. Molly
was a little crestfallen, so far did Marta seem from what she had hoped
to meet with. Yet she asked only $10 per month.
“That is $2.00 to the good,” thought Molly, “and by promising her $12
when she can do my work as I wish, she will have something to work
for. I believe that is where people make a mistake in our country. The
incompetent girls, if they have only impudence enough to ask it, get as
good wages as the competent.”
Marta had arrived with two very large trunks, each of them no doubt the
Thuringian equivalent for a Saratoga, at which excess of baggage Molly
had marveled. Molly had taken her to her room, and told her to go down
when ready and begin taking things out of the kitchen closets. This she
had heard her doing when Harry had asked when she was to arrive.
Molly found Marta attired in what seemed a green baize skirt, very
short; worked zephyr slippers with thick soles, quite new and very
large, over gray knitted worsted stockings, also apparently new. Over
the skirt she wore a clean cotton camisole or sacque. Evidently Marta
was dressed with strict attention to her début in a new place, and was
satisfied that her slippers were as attractive as they were no doubt
comfortable.
Molly wanted to know exactly what was in the kitchen closets, so that
she might see what she had to work with, therefore she had set Marta
to clean them out, although Mrs. Winfield had left everything in such
excellent order that it was not absolutely necessary this first day.
It was eleven o’clock, and Molly, although she had laughed at Harry’s
anxiety to eat bread and cheese, had decided that it would be best
to have a luncheon that would be as little trouble as possible, yet
one that should not seem at all a makeshift, so sensitive was she to
Harry’s good-natured criticism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account