A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill

								

traditions of unexcelled cooking, and unparalleled cleanliness, together
with a vanquished army of mistresses, housemaids, laundresses, and
butlers. She belonged to the order of Cooks Militant, and she had long
since won her spurs.
Among the things which Myrtella in her sweeping condemnation of life in
general disapproved, none loomed larger than her brother and his
family. But the bond of blood, stronger than likes or dislikes, favor
or prejudice, brought her back to him again and again, to share with him
her substance, and to criticize his conduct.
On this particular afternoon she had started out for Billy-goat Hill to
hear about the shooting, and to break the news to the family, that she
had gotten a new place. This happened with such regularity, that it
would not have deserved attention, had not the astounding fact to be
added that Myrtella was pleased. In her fifteen years of rebellious
services she had never before approximated a place that gave
satisfaction. To be sure there were dark and not-to-be-remembered
instances where she had failed to give satisfaction herself, but usually
it was the place, “the new place,” with its varying code of musts
and must-nots, that caused Myrtella to spend many of her days in the
Intelligence Office, or on street-cars, or tramping through the streets
in quest of that ever elusive “good home.”
She had started out on her pilgrimage in a fairly equable frame of mind,
but before she got well under way, the wind had made her furious. It was
a frisky March breeze that had gotten left behind and now wandered into
May, bent on mischief.
Myrtella tacked into it, like a sailing sloop, full rigged and all
sails set, an angular, heavy-set person with a belligerent expression
strangely at variance with the embarrassed, almost timid movements of
her hands and feet. Short locks of straight black hair whipped across
her face, her skirts, blown tightly back against her knees, bellied in
the wind, while her wide-brimmed hat caught the full force of the blast,
like a veritable top-sail.
By the time she had taken three tacks to cross the common, and was ready
to come about at the corner, there was a balloon jibe, that sent the
sails all flapping against the mast, and left her in such a flurry
of indignation, that she failed to see a string that stretched its
insidious length, two inches above the pavement, from fence to curb.
After her fall, instead of expiring of apoplexy, as might have been
expected from her countenance, Myrtella picked herself up from the
pavement and, peeping through a crack in the fence, smiled. It was an
expression so unfamiliar to her features that they scarcely knew how to
manage it.
“I see you, Chick!” she said in a voice that strove to be gentle; “why
don't you come on out here and speak to me?”
Chick and Skeeter, recognized a significant bulge to the string bag
which she carried, scrambled forth, the former skilfully evading her