The Bennington Evening Banner

SERVANTS IN ITALY.

An Interesting Experience With Their Perquisites and Wages.

A New England family spent last year in Italy, keeping house that the daughters, who were studying art, might have the comfort of a real home. They were much pleased with Italian servants, whom they found full of a delightful friendliness, equally removed from servility and impertinence; but, alas, these charming servants were not strictly honest. They had mysterious arrangements with the tradesmen, commissions, perquisites, pickings, treats to innumerable cousins. The mistress was troubled, yet she knew her Marietta to be a treasure whom it would be folly to dismiss. Instead she summoned her and suggested, with careful delicacy, a curtailment of these self assumed privileges, offering increased wages in return. Marietta agreed, but at the end of a week withdrew her assent.

"I cannot—no!" she declared vehemently. "At first I thought but of the money. Now I have time to think of other things, and I find myself insulted. Twenty times I put out my hand to take what I must not and what I have always taken. Then I feel like a thief—I, who am an honest woman. If I am to serve the signora longer she will pay me as before and trust me. I have judgment and discretion. I do not forget her interests. A trifle here, a trifle there, what does it matter? If it is more one week it is less the next and always such a little. I cannot be tied to my wages as one ties a greedy boy to the leg of the table that he may not reach the jam. Surely the signora understands?"

Marietta remained and continued to be judiciously and discreetly honest in her own fashion.—Youth's Companion.