The doctor advised us to engage a nurse, but the mere word frightened my mother, and we got between her and the door as if the woman was already on the stair.
To have a strange woman in my mother's room--you who are used to them cannot conceive what it meant to us.
Then we must have a servant.

This seemed only less horrible.

My father turned up his sleeves and clutched the besom.

I tossed aside my papers, and was ready to run the errands.

He answered the door, I kept the fires going, he gave me a lesson in cooking, I showed him how to make beds, one of us wore an apron.