It comforted Priscilla to find that almost the whole village wanted to come and cook for her, or as the women put it "do" for her. Their cooking powers were strictly limited, and they proposed to make up for this by doing for her very completely in other ways; they would scrub, sweep, clean windows, wash,--anything and everything they would do. Would they also sew buttons on her uncle's clothes? Priscilla asked anxiously. And they were ready to sew buttons all over Fritzing if buttons would make him happy. This eagerness was very gratifying, but it was embarrassing as well. The extremely aged and the extremely young were the only ones that refrained from offering their services. Some of the girls were excluded as too weedy; some of the mothers because their babies were too new; some of the wives because their husbands were too exacting; but when Priscilla counted up the names she had written down she found there were twenty-five. For a moment she was staggered. Then she rose to the occasion and got out of the difficulty with what she thought great skill, arranging, as it was impossible to disappoint twenty-four of these, that they should take it in turn, each coming for one day until all had had a day and then beginning again with the first one. It seemed a brilliant plan. Life at Creeper Cottage promised to be very varied. She gathered them together in the village shop to talk it over. She asked them if they thought ten shillings a day and food would be enough. She asked it hesitatingly, afraid lest she were making them an impossibly frugal offer. She was relieved at the cry of assent; but it was followed after a moment by murmurs from the married women, when they had had time to reflect, that it was unfair to pay the raw young ones at the same rate as themselves. Priscilla however turned a deaf ear to their murmurings. "The girls may not," she said, raising her hand to impose silence, "be able to get through as much as you do in a day, but they'll be just as tired when evening comes. Certainly I shall give them the same wages." She made them draw lots as to who should begin, and took the winner home with her then and there; she too, though the day was far spent, was to have her ten shillings. "What, have you forgotten your New Testaments?" Priscilla cried, when more murmurs greeted this announcement. "Don't you remember the people who came at the eleventh hour to labour in the vineyard and got just the same as the others? Why should I try to improve on parables?" And there was something about Priscilla, an air, an authority, that twisted the women of Symford into any shape of agreement she chose. The twenty-four went their several ways. The twenty-fifth ran home to put on a clean apron, and got back to the shop in time to carry the eggs and butter and bread Priscilla had bought. "I forgot to bring any money," said Priscilla when the postmistress--it was she who kept the village shop--told her how much it came to. "Does it matter?"