It would have shown her good will at all events.
But instead of that she had returned to her room the moment dinner was over, and Eunice, who went to hunt for a missing sock of Richard's, reported that she was lying on the lounge with a story book in her hand.
"Shiffless," was the word Mrs.Markham wanted to use, but she repressed it, for she would not talk openly against Richard's wife so soon after her arrival, though she did make some invidious remarks concerning the handsome underclothes, wondering "what folks were thinking of to put so much work where it was never seen.

Puffs, and embroidery, and lace, and, I vum, if the ruffles ain't tucked too," she continued, in a despairing voice, hoping Ethelyn knew "how to iron such filagree herself, for the mercy knew she didn't." Now these same puffs, and embroidery, and ruffles, and tucks had excited Eunice's liveliest admiration, and her fingers fairly itched to see how they would look hanging on the clothes bars after passing through her hands.

That Ethelyn could touch them she never once dreamed.

Her instincts were truer than Mrs.Markham's and it struck her as perfectly proper that one like Ethelyn should sit still while others served, and to her mistress' remarks as to the ironing, she hastened to reply: "I'd a heap sight rather do them up than to iron the boys' coarse shirts and pantaloons.

Don't you mind the summer I was at Camden working for Miss Avery, who lived next door to Miss Judge Miller, from New York?
She had just such things as these, and I used to go in sometimes and watch Katy iron 'em, so I b'lieve I can do it myself.