“I am very sorry, dear, my carelessness should punish you; but don’t disturb me by grumbling and I will try and get done before tea, and then we will go together.”  This time Emilie was more successful; she took pains to understand what was to be done, and the gores of her balloon fitted beautifully.

“Now Edith, dear, ring for some paste,” said Emilie, just as the clock struck four; Margaret answered the bell.  Margaret was the housemaid, and so far from endeavouring in her capacity to overcome evil with good, she was perpetually making mischief and increasing any evil there might be, either in kitchen or parlour, by her mode of delivering a message.  She would be sure to add her mite to any blame that she might hear, in her report to the kitchen, and thus, without being herself a bad or violent temper, was continually fomenting strife, and adding fuel to the fire of the cook, who was of a very choleric turn.  The request for paste was civilly made and received, but Emilie unfortunately called Margaret back to say, “Oh, ask cook, please, to make it stiffer than she did the last that we had for the kite; that did not prove quite strong.”

Margaret took the message down and informed cook that “Miss Schomberg did not think she knew how to make paste.”  “Then let her come and make it herself,” said cook.  “She wants to be cook I think; she had better come.  I sha’nt make it.  What is it for?”

“Oh,” said Margaret, “she is after some foreign filagree work of hers, that’s all.”

“Well, I’m busy now and I am not going to put myself out about it, she must wait.”

Emilie did wait the due time, but as the paste did not come she went down for it.  “Is the paste ready, cook?” she asked.

“No, Miss Schomberg,” was the short reply, and cook went on assiduously washing up her plates.

“Will you be so kind as to make it, cook, for I want it particularly that it may have as much time as possible to dry.”

“Perhaps you will make it yourself then,” was the gracious rejoinder.  Emilie was not above making a little paste, and as she saw that something had put cook out, she willingly consented; but she did not know where to get either flour or saucepan, and cook and Margaret kept making signs and laughing, so that it was not very pleasant.  She grew quite hot, as she had to ask first for a spoon, then for a saucepan, then for the flour and water; at last she modestly turned round and said, “Cook, I really do not quite know how to make a little paste.  I am ashamed to say it, but I have lived so long in lodgings that I see nothing of what is done in the kitchen.  Will you tell or show me?  I am very ignorant.”

Her kind civil tone quite changed cook’s, and she said, “Oh, Miss, I’ll make it, only you see, you shouldn’t have said I didn’t know how.”  Emilie explained, and the cook was pacified, and gave Miss Schomberg a good deal of gratuitous information during the process.  How she did not like her place, and should not stay, and how she disliked her mistress, and plenty more—­to which Emilie listened politely, but did not make much reply.  She plainly perceived that cook wanted a very forbearing mistress, but she could not exactly tell her so.  She merely said in her quaint quiet way, that every one had something to bear, and the paste being made, she left the kitchen.