Bad Hugh

Adah was too pretty, too stylish, to suit the prim Eudora, who felt

keenly how she must suffer by comparison with her sister's waiting maid.

Even unsuspicious Anna saw the point, and smiling archly asked "what she

could do to make Rose less attractive."

In some things Anna could not have her way, and when her mother and

sisters insisted that they would not keep a separate table for Markham,

as they called Adah, she yielded, secretly bidding Pamelia see that

everything was comfortable and nice for Mrs. Markham and her little boy.

There was hardly need for this injunction, for in the kitchen Adah was

regarded as far superior to those who would have trampled her down, and

her presence among the servants was not without its influence, softening

Jim's rough, loud ways, and making both Dixson and Pamelia more careful

of their words and manners when she was with them. Much, too, they grew

to love and pet the little Willie, who, accustomed to the free range of

Spring Bank, asserted the same right at Terrace Hill, going where he

pleased, putting himself so often in Mrs. Richards' way, that she began

at last to notice him, and if no one was near, to caress the handsome

boy. Asenath and Eudora held out longer, but even they were not proof

against Willie's winning ways.

It was many weeks ere Adah wrote to Alice Johnson, and when at last she

did, she said of Terrace Hill: "I am happier here than I at first supposed it possible. The older

ladies were so proud, so cold, so domineering, that it made me very

wretched, in spite of sweet Anna's kindness. But there has come a

perceptible change, and they now treat me civilly, if nothing more,

while I do believe they are fond of Willie, and would miss him if he

were gone."

Adah was right in this conjecture; for had it now been optional with the

Misses Richards whether Willie should go or stay, they would have kept

him there from choice, so cheery and pleasant he made the house. Adah

was still too pretty, too stylish, to suit their ideas of a servant; but

when, as time passed on, they found she did not presume at all on her

good looks, but meekly kept her place as Anna's maid or companion, they

dropped the haughty manner they had at first assumed, and treated her

with civility, if not with kindness.

With Anna it was different. Won by Adah's gentleness and purity, she

came at last to love her almost as much as if she had been a younger

sister. Adah was not a servant to her, but a companion, a friend, with

whom she daily held familiar converse, learning from her much that was

good, and prizing her more and more as the winter weeks went swiftly by.