"
Hesper threw down her book, and her eyes flamed.
"What do you mean by using me so, Miss Marston?" she said.
"I am very sorry to put you to inconvenience," answered Mary;
"but the husband seems dying, and the wife is scarcely able to
crawl."
"I have nothing to do with it," interrupted Hesper. "When you
made it necessary for me to part with my maid, you undertook to
perform her duties. I did not engage you as a sick-nurse for
other people."
"'No, ma'am," replied Mary; "but this is an extreme case, and I
can not believe you will object to my going."
"I do object. How, pray, is the world to go on, if this kind of
thing be permitted! I may be going out to dinner, or to the opera
to-night, for anything you know, and who is there to dress me?
No; on principle, and for the sake of example, I will not let you
go."
"I thought," said Mary, not a little disappointed in Hesper, "I
did not stand to you quite in the relation of an ordinary
servant."
"Certainly you do not: I look for a little more devotion from you
than from a common, ungrateful creature who thinks only of
herself. But you are all alike."
More and more distressed to find one she had loved so long show
herself so selfish, Mary's indignation had almost got the better
of her. But a little heightening of her color was all the show it
made.
"Indeed, it is quite necessary, ma'am," she persisted, "that I
should go.
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