There was no servant in the establishment except an old Indian woman, who amused herself by preparing vegetables and washing dishes in the kitchen--not being at all active, in consequence of having lost part of her feet from indulging in a fancy for a couch of snow on one of the coldest nights of the preceding winter, when, to use a charitable phrase, 'she was not quite herself.' I believe that, even after this melancholy warning, that eccentric person was frequently somebody else. 'However,' as Mrs. Bull said, 'she didn't disturb any one'--and although I could not exactly see the force of this reasoning, I treated it with respectful silence for Mrs. Bull's sake. Miss Friggs, who was 'quite one of the family,' and had lived in it so long that I believe she almost persuaded herself that she had been born in it, 'did' her own room--which was perfectly appalling with its fearful neatness. There was not a thread on the carpet, nor a particle of dust in the corners; and the bed, when made up, was as accurately proportioned as though it had all been scientifically measured off. I have caught glimpses of Miss Friggs going about this business with her head carefully tied up, as though it might burst with the immensity of her ideas on the subject; and when she had finished, you might have eaten off the floor--that is, if you preferred it to a table. This was her one occupation in life, and she did it thoroughly; but it seemed too sad to have so few occupations that any could be accomplished in so faultless a manner. Fired with honest but misguided zeal, I one morning entered the lists against Miss Friggs in a vain attempt to make my own bed; but those horrid feathers acted like the things in the Philosopher's Scales, for when some were up, others were down; neither north nor south, east nor west would agree to terms of equality, and it was impossible to bring them to any sort of compromise. I related my experience to Mrs. Bull; and when I assured her that I had crawled all over the bed in the vain attempt to bring some order out of chaos, she was more amused, in her quiet way, than I had ever known her to be. She desired me, however, to leave the room, to her in future, as she enjoyed it, and I could not be expected to do everything. I did not interfere with her measures again. A lesson had been given me to look over; and on Mr. Summers's first visit to me, in Mrs. Bull's parlor, I felt as if he had been a dentist with evil designs on my largest grinder. He was as cool as though he had been fifty and I five, and behaved himself generally as though it were a very common thing for youthful principals to give private lessons to their young lady-teachers.