Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson Page A

chicken. I even checked her good ref. The old lady to whom I spoke was enthusiastic in her praise. “She’s a good girl,” the old lady said insistently—perhaps I feel now, too insistently. “You don’t need to worry about Hope any, she’s a good girl. Don’t you pay any attention to what you may hear —that Hope is a good girl.”
    The only trouble with Hope was that she disappeared at the end of the first week, taking with her her salary, ten dollars she had borrowed from me, and my overshoes. Two days after Hope disappeared I answered a ring at the door, and found standing there a lady of unequivocal firmness and a most suspicious eye. “Is Hope here?” she asked me.
    â€œShe is not,” I said shortly, not overanxious to dwell lengthily upon the subject of Hope.
    â€œI’m her parole officer,” the woman said. “If you know where she is it’s your duty to tell me.”
    â€œShe’s got my overshoes, wherever she is,” I said, and tried to close the front door, but the parole officer put her shoulder against the frame and said, “It’s your civic duty as a citizen to report this matter.” After I had told her all about Hope and my overshoes I pointed out that the ten dollars was relatively unimportant but that with this constant wet weather it was hard going without anything on my feet, and asked nervously what chance there was of getting them back.
    â€œ We ’ll get them,” she said enigmatically, “they can’t get far without stealing a car.”
    A week later I was invited to the local jail to see Hope, who gave me back my overshoes with an apology for having kept them so long, asked kindly after the children, the cats, and the dog, remarked parenthetically that she had never really gotten to know my husband, and asked me to go five thousand dollars bail for her.
    I told her civilly enough that these constant ads in the paper made such a drain on my pocketbook that I had really nothing left for more than household expenses, and asked nicely what she was in for. It turned out to be grand larceny; my overshoes, she said, she had never regarded as anything but a loan; it was a difficulty with a former employer’s fur coat which worried her now. I shook hands cordially with the jailer’s wife, declined a piece of fresh-made sponge cake, and departed. I sent a carton of cigarettes and some magazines to the jail for Hope about a month later, and got back an earnest letter saying she would be sure to come back to work for us when she got out, and could we wait three years?
    Between the time I last saw Hope and the time I got her letter, Amelia had come and. gone. Amelia had been recommended to me by a neighbor, with the specific statement that Amelia was not an intelligent girl, but she was able, my neighbor was confident, to do simple household tasks. Amelia washed dishes, but not very clean. She arrived every morning on foot, by a process which required that she inquire at every house in the neighborhood each day before she found ours. She never tried to borrow my overshoes, which I was keeping anyway in the only closet in the house which locked, and I sincerely believe that after working for us for two days she was still unable to find her way from the kitchen to the front door without falling over the furniture.
    Like Hope, Amelia had but one major failing. The second day she was with us—which turned out, coincidentally, to be the last—she made cookies, spending all one joyous afternoon in the kitchen, droning happily to herself, fidgeting, cluttering, measuring.
    At dinner, dessert arrived with Amelia’s giggle and a flourish. She set the plate of cookies down in front of my husband, and my husband, who is a nervous man, glanced down at them and dropped his coffee cup. “Sinner,” the cookies announced in bold pink icing, “Sinner, repent.”
    Phoebe did not stay with us much