Steal Away Th’ Ould Scut She Made a Croquet Wicket of Herself CHAPTER I A COERCED COOK. A COERCED COOK. AT the last minute we learned that the girl we had counted upon to do our cooking at Clover Lodge had scarlet fever, and as she was the only local girl that we could hire—New England girls preferring to work in a “shop” to domestic service—we were at our wits’ end. In our extremity Mrs. Vernon (my wife) made a last appeal to Minerva. She went into the kitchen of our New York flat and said, “Minerva, Mamie Logan, the girl we expected to have up at Clover Lodge, has scarlet fever.” Minerva was blacking the stove (as I could see from the dining room), but she stopped and turned around as she always did when her mistress spoke to her, and said “Yas’m.” “Well, do you know what that means, Minerva?” “Means she’s sick, ma’am.” “Yes, but it also means that I haven’t anybody to cook for me up there.” “Yas’m.” “Well, don’t you think you could go up if we gave you five dollars a month more than you’re getting now?” Minerva rubbed her already black arm with the blacking brush in an absent-minded sort of way as she said, “’Deed I hate the country. It’s so dismal.” I would have given up trying to get her to come then, as her tone sounded final to me, but Mrs. Vernon caught a gleam of willingness in her expression, and she said, “Some country places may be doleful, Minerva, but Clover Lodge is in one of the most
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