"I should never ask you to do anything you would not like," she
said.
"I don't think you could," answered Mary. "There are more things
I should like to do for you than you would think to ask.--In
fact," she added, looking round with a loving smile, "I don't
know what I shouldn't like to do for you."
"My meaning was, that, as a thing of course, I should never ask
you to do anything menial," explained Hesper, venturing a little
further still, and now speaking in a tone perfectly matter-of-
fact.
"I don't know what you intend by _menial_," returned Mary.
Hesper thought it not unnatural she should not he familiar with
the word, and proceeded to explain it as well as she could. That
seeming ignorance may be the consequence of more knowledge, she
had yet to learn.
"_Menial_, don't you know?" she said, "is what you give
servants to do."
But therewith she remembered that Mary's help in certain things
wherein her maid's incapacity was harrowing, was one of the hopes
she mainly cherished in making her proposal: that definition of
_menial_ would hardly do.
"I mean--I mean," she resumed, with a little embarrassment, a
rare thing with her, "--things like--like--cleaning one's shoes,
don't you know?--or brushing your hair."
Mary burst out laughing.
"Let me come to you to-morrow morning," she said, "and I will
brush your hair that you will want me to come again the next day.
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