§ 144 She Who Sought for Peace
Young Mrs. Smith was in need of a domestic for general house-work. She inserted a notice in the local paper. In answer to the advertisement a rather slatternly-looking colored girl applied for the job.
“Where did you work last?” asked Mrs. Smith.
“I wukked fur de Jones fambly right down de street yere a piece,” said the candidate.
“Do you mean the Herbert Joneses who live in the white house on the corner?” inquired Mrs. Smith.
“Yassum, they’s the ones.”
“When did you leave their employment?”
“Las’ Sad’day night.”
“Did you quit or were you discharged?”
“I quit. Yassum, of my own free will I up and quit.”
“Why did you quit?”
“Me, I likes peace—tha’s why! I couldn’ stand it no mo’ to be stayin’ in a house whar they’s always so much quollin’ goin’ on.”
Now the Joneses were friends of Mrs. Smith, and, to her always, they had seemed a happy couple, ideally mated. Naturally this disclosure shocked her greatly. She hardly could believe it. Still, she shared with the rest of us an almost universal trait—she had a natural curiosity. If the household of her neighbors was rent by internal dissensions here was a chance to find out the true state of affairs.
“Do you mean to tell me that Mr. and Mrs. Jones have been quarreling?”
“Yassum. All de two months I stayed there they was quollin’ constant.”
“What did they quarrel about?”
“Diffunt things, ever’ day. Ef ’twasn’t Mrs. Jones quollin’ wid me ’bout somethin’ or other I’d done, ’twas Mr. Jones.”