Her dresses were
made, her room engaged, and she must go, she said, urging that Nettie's
health required the change--Nettie, who had given to her husband a
sickly, puny child, which lived just long enough to warrant a grand
funeral, and then was laid to rest under the shadow of the Van Buren
monument, out in pleasant Mount Auburn.
So Mrs. Van Buren went back to Boston, while Aunt Barbara gave all
needful directions to Betty with regard to the management of the house,
and the garden, and plants, and cellar door, which must be shut nights,
and the spot on the roof which sometimes leaked when it rained, and the
burdocks and dandelions which must be dug up, and the grass which Uncle
Billy Thompson must cut once in two weeks, and the old cat, Tabby, and
the young cat, Jim, who had come to the door in a storm, and was now the
pet of the house, and the canary bird, and the yeast, and look in the
vinegar barrel to see that all was right, and be sure and scald the
milk-pans, and turn them up in the sun for an hour, and keep the doors
locked, and the silver up in the scuttle-hole; and if she heard the rat
which baffled and tormented them so long, get some poison and kill it,
but not on any account let it get in the cistern; and keep the
door-steps clean, and the stoop, and once in a while sweep the low roof
at the back of the house, and not sit up late nights, or sleep very long
in the morning; and inasmuch as there would be so little to do, she
might as well finish up all her new sewing, and make the pile of sheets
and pillow-cases which had been cut out since March.
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