The hired girl came today. She is 13 years old and comes once a week for an hour to do our bidding, mostly to fetch and carry. We pay her $20 whether she stays the full hour or not. Some weeks we have less for her to do.
She gathers trash from all over the house, hauls the baskets of clean laundry up from the basement, distributes toilet paper to both bathrooms, helps change beds. Sometimes we straighten up a cabinet or break down cardboard boxes in the garage. She's willing to do anything, so sometimes I give her a pair of scissors and have her cut off that plastic that holds soda bottles together. Stuff like that.
Having a hired girl makes me feel a little bit like a 19th-century farm wife. Of course, if that were the case, she'd live in and be at my beck and call 24/7. She would be an orphan, of course, and Irish, and probably real stupid. I would be able to abuse her verbally and even beat her when I thought she deserved it or whenever I was just in a mood to take my discontent out on somebody else. And if I were a 19th-century farm wife, I'm sure my level of discontent would be enough to kill her.
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