Then he proceeded to discuss other shells. I wanted to go over and hear him, but I was buttonholed in an opposite corner by Miss Burritt, who was entertaining Mrs. Springer and me with a dissertation on the troublesome character of lady boarders.
"I never mean to take another into my house," she said: "they are ten times the bother that gentlemen are. Of course I don't mean come-and-go boarders like you, Mrs. Springer, and I don't mean them that are like you, Miss Tiffaine," she added, turning to me. "You are no more trouble than the gentlemen boarders. You just take your meals and go off to your telegraphing, and are out of the way just like the men."
"Bless my soul I can she work a telegraph?" asked Mrs. Springer, looking at me in admiration.
"Yes, indeed she can," answered Miss Burritt, as if she was proud of her boarder. "If all my lady-boarders were like Miss Tiffaine, I'd just as lief have them as gentlemen, and a good deal liever, for I'm fonder of my own sex than of the opposite sex. But the ladies ain't all like Miss Tiffaine. They are always wanting hot water to wash their laces, or something or other. Then they are always making over dresses and cloaks and things, and they must have flatirons to press them out. They are all the time tinkering at something, doctoring themselves or their children. They take off the dishes and pails and spoons and tumblers and everything: then when we come to set the table we've got to race all over the establishment. Now, to-day Norah searched the kitchen and dining-room and pantries high and low for the quart measure, and find it she couldn't anywhere. And she was making a pudding, too, for dinner, so she just had to guess at the quantity of flour."
"Jist so," said Mrs. Springer.
"And the consequence was, that the pudding was heavy and soggy." Miss Burritt's puddings were apt to be heavy and soggy.
"Of course," assented Mrs. Springer. "But I'll tell you what you might ha' done, Miss Burritt: that's your name, ain't it? You might ha' measured your flour in the pint measure. I often do that way; but then you must take two of the pint to one of the quart. For instance, if it's two quarts, you must take four pints, and if it's three quarts, you must take six pints; and the puddin'll come out just as good."
"Of course," said Miss Burritt, "but my pint measure was at the bottom of the flour barrel: they'd emptied a sack of flour on it, and there it was, you see. Well, I didn't finish my story. I was going round putting clean towels in the rooms—for I put a clean towel in every room of this house every day of my life—and there, in Miss Dayton's room, large as life, was the missing quart measure!"
"Well done !" said Mrs. Springer.
"Miss Dayton is the most troublesome boarder in the house," said Miss Burritt. "I mean to tell her next month that I can't board her."
I was rather startled to find that I felt a slight satisfaction at this announcement, and yet Miss Dayton and I were on quite friendly terms.
"Carrying off the quart cup and spoiling the dinner! Nobody could stand it."
"That they couldn't!" assented Mrs. Springer. "But if I was in your shoes I'd have that pint measure outen that flour barrel: then, by takin' two measures to the quart, you kin most ginerly hit it. Law! I can't cook fit for a cannibal without I measure everything. I've hearn of people going by their head; but when folks talk to me about puttin' judgment into my vittals, I tell 'em to go 'long."
"I don't believe you," I heard Miss Dayton say saucily to Mr. Abernethy. I glanced across the room and saw him smiling in her face. Miss Burritt's next words brought me precipitately back to my own side of the room.
"I needn't talk about lady boarders, though. Mr. Abernethy is more trouble than any six I ever saw. I wouldn't board him another month for a hundred-dollar bill."
"Why?" I said. "He never carries off the quart measures and things, does he?"
