She found it took all her wages to buy her shoes and stockings and flannel,
for her health suffered very much from the harsh climate and her new mode
of life, so she ventured to ask for an increase of a dollar a month.

"Is that your gratitude," was the indignant reply, "for all that we've done
for you? The idea of a nigger wanting over four dollars a month, when
you've been working all your life, too, for nothing at all. Why everybody
in town is wondering that I keep you, when white help is so much better."

"But, ma'am," replied Susan, "they tell me here that a woman gets six
dollars a month, when she does the whole work of a family."

"A _white_ woman does," said this Abolitionist lady, "but not a nigger, I
guess. Besides, if they do, you ought to be willing to work cheaper for
Abolitionists, for they are your friends."

If "save me from my friends," had been in Lalla Rookh, Susan would
certainly have applied it, but as the quotation belonged to the heroic
rather than the sentimental department, she could not avail herself of it,
and therefore went on chopping her codfish and onions together, at the rate
of four dollars a month, and very weak eyes, till some good wind blew
Captain Moore to the command of his company, in the Fort near the town.

After Mrs. Moore's housekeeping operations had fairly commenced, she found
it would be necessary to have a person to clean the house of four rooms,
and to help Neptune mind the baby. Aunt Polly accordingly set forward on an
exploration. She presented quite an unusual appearance as regards her style
of dress. She wore a plaid domestic gingham gown; she had several stuff
ones, but she declared she never put one of them on for any thing less than
"meetin." She had a black satin Methodist bonnet, very much the shape of a