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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Treasure, by Kathleen Norris
+#2 in our series by Kathleen Norris
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+Title: The Treasure
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+Author: Kathleen Norris
+
+Release Date: July, 2003 [Etext# 4211]
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+[This file was first posted on December 11, 2001]
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+
+
+THE TREASURE
+
+KATHLEEN NORRIS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Lizzie, who happened to be the Salisbury's one servant at the time,
+was wasteful. It was almost her only fault, in Mrs. Salisbury's
+eyes, for such trifles as her habit of becoming excited and "saucy,"
+in moments of domestic stress, or to ask boldly for other holidays
+than her alternate Sunday and Thursday afternoons, or to resent at
+all times the intrusion of any person, even her mistress, into her
+immaculate kitchen, might have been overlooked. Mrs. Salisbury had
+been keeping house in a suburban town for twenty years; she was not
+considered an exacting mistress. She was perfectly willing to
+forgive Lizzie what was said in the hurried hours before the company
+dinner or impromptu lunch, and to let Lizzie slip out for a walk
+with her sister in the evening, and to keep out of the kitchen
+herself as much as was possible. So much might be conceded to a girl
+who was honest and clean, industrious, respectable, and a fair cook.
+
+But the wastefulness was a serious matter. Mrs. Salisbury was a
+careful and an experienced manager; she resented waste; indeed, she
+could not afford to tolerate it. She liked to go into the kitchen
+herself every morning, to eye the contents of icebox and pantry, and
+decide upon needed stores. Enough butter, enough cold meat for
+dinner, enough milk for a nourishing soup, eggs and salad for
+luncheon--what about potatoes?
+
+Lizzie deliberately frustrated this house-wifely ambition. She
+flounced and muttered when other hands than her own were laid upon
+her icebox. She turned on rushing faucets, rattled dishes in her
+pan. Yet Mrs. Salisbury felt that she must personally superintend
+these matters, because Lizzie was so wasteful. The girl had not been
+three months in the Salisbury family before all bills for supplies
+soared alarmingly.
+
+This was all wrong. Mrs. Salisbury fretted over it a few weeks, then
+confided her concern to her husband. But Kane Salisbury would not
+listen to the details. He scowled at the introduction of the topic,
+glanced restlessly at his paper, murmured that Lizzie might be
+"fired"; and, when Mrs. Salisbury had resolutely bottled up her
+seething discontent inside of herself, she sometimes heard him
+murmuring, "Bad--bad--management" as he sat chewing his pipe-stem on
+the dark porch or beside the fire.
+
+Alexandra, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the house, was equally
+incurious and unreasonable about domestic details.
+
+"But, honestly, Mother, you know you're afraid of Lizzie, and she
+knows it," Alexandra would declare gaily; "I can't tell you how I'd
+manage her, because she's not my servant, but I know I would do
+something!"
+
+Beauty and intelligence gave Alexandra, even at eighteen, a certain
+serene poise and self-reliance that lifted her above the old-
+fashioned topics of "trouble with girls," and housekeeping, and
+marketing. Alexandra touched these subjects under the titles of
+"budgets," "domestic science," and "efficiency." Neither she nor her
+mother recognized the old, homely subjects under their new names,
+and so the daughter felt a lack of interest, and the mother a lack
+of sympathy, that kept them from understanding each other.
+Alexandra, ready to meet and conquer all the troubles of a badly
+managed world, felt that one small home did not present a very
+terrible problem. Poor Mrs. Salisbury only knew that it was becoming
+increasingly difficult to keep a general servant at all in a family
+of five, and that her husband's salary, of something a little less
+than four thousand dollars a year, did not at all seem the princely
+sum that they would have thought it when they were married on twenty
+dollars a week.
+
+From the younger members of the family, Fred, who was fifteen, and
+Stanford, three years younger, she expected, and got, no sympathy.
+The three young Salisburys found money interesting only when they
+needed it for new gowns, or matinee tickets, or tennis rackets, or
+some kindred purchase. They needed it desperately, asked for it, got
+it, spent it, and gave it no further thought. It meant nothing to
+them that Lizzie was wasteful. It was only to their mother that the
+girl's slipshod ways were becoming an absolute trial.
+
+Lizzie, very neat and respectful, would interfere with Mrs.
+Salisbury's plan of a visit to the kitchen by appearing to ask for
+instructions before breakfast was fairly over. When the man of the
+house had gone, and before the children appeared, Lizzie would
+inquire:
+
+"Just yourselves for dinner, Mrs. Salisbury?"
+
+"Just ourselves. Let--me--see--" Mrs. Salisbury would lay down her
+newspaper, stir her cooling coffee. The memory of last night's
+vegetables would rise before her; there must be baked onions left,
+and some of the corn.
+
+"There was some lamb left, wasn't there?" she might ask.
+
+Amazement on Lizzie's part.
+
+"That wasn't such an awful big leg, Mrs. Salisbury. And the boys had
+Perry White in, you know. There's just a little plateful left. I
+gave Sam the bones."
+
+Mrs. Salisbury could imagine the plateful: small, neat, cold.
+
+"Sometimes I think that if you left the joint on the platter,
+Lizzie, there are scrapings, you know--" she might suggest.
+
+"I scraped it," Lizzie would answer briefly, conclusively.
+
+"Well, that for lunch, then, for Miss Sandy and me," Mrs. Salisbury
+would decide hastily. "I'll order something fresh for dinner. Were
+there any vegetables left?"
+
+"There were a few potatoes, enough for lunch," Lizzie would admit
+guardedly.
+
+"I'll order vegetables, too, then!" And Mrs. Salisbury would sigh.
+Every housekeeper knows that there is no economy in ordering afresh
+for every meal.
+
+"And we need butter--"
+
+"Butter again! Those two pounds gone?"
+
+"There's a little piece left, not enough, though. And I'm on my last
+cake of soap, and we need crackers, and vanilla, and sugar, unless
+you're not going to have a dessert, and salad oil--"
+
+"Just get me a pencil, will you?" This was as usual. Mrs. Salisbury
+would pencil a long list, would bite her lips thoughtfully, and sigh
+as she read it over.
+
+"Asparagus to-night, then. And, Lizzie, don't serve so much melted
+butter with it as you did last time; there must have been a cupful
+of melted butter. And, another time, save what little scraps of
+vegetables there are left; they help out so at lunch--"
+
+"There wasn't a saucerful of onions left last night," Lizzie would
+assert, "and two cobs of corn, after I'd had my dinner. You couldn't
+do much with those. And, as for butter on the asparagus"--Lizzie was
+very respectful, but her tone would rise aggrievedly--"it was every
+bit eaten, Mrs. Salisbury!"
+
+"Yes, I know. But we mustn't let these young vandals eat us out of
+house and home, you know," the mistress would say, feeling as if she
+were doing something contemptibly small. And, worsted, she would
+return to her paper. "But I don't care, we cannot afford it!" Mrs.
+Salisbury would say to herself, when Lizzie had gone, and very
+thoughtfully she would write out a check payable to "cash." "I used
+to use up little odds and ends so deliciously, years ago!" she
+sometimes reflected disconsolately. "And Kane always says we never
+live as well now as we did then! He always praised my dinners."
+
+Nowadays Mr. Salisbury was not so well satisfied. Lizzie rang the
+changes upon roasted and fried meats, boiled and creamed vegetables,
+baked puddings and canned fruits contentedly enough. She made cup
+cake and sponge cake, sponge cake and cup cake all the year round.
+Nothing was ever changed, no unexpected flavor ever surprised the
+palates of the Salisbury family. May brought strawberry shortcake,
+December cottage puddings, cold beef always made a stew; creamed
+codfish was never served without baked potatoes. The Salisbury table
+was a duplicate of some millions of other tables, scattered the
+length and breadth of the land.
+
+"And still the bills go up!" fretted Mrs. Salisbury.
+
+"Well, why don't you fire her, Sally?" her husband asked, as he had
+asked of almost every maid they had ever had--of lazy Annies, and
+untidy Selmas, and ignorant Katies. And, as always, Mrs. Salisbury
+answered patiently:
+
+"Oh, Kane, what's the use? It simply means my going to Miss Crosby's
+again, and facing that awful row of them, and beginning that I have
+three grown children, and no other help--"
+
+"Mother, have you ever had a perfect maid?" Sandy had asked
+earnestly years before. Her mother spent a moment in reflection,
+arresting the hand with which she was polishing silver. Alexandra
+was only sixteen then, and mother and daughter were bridging a gap
+when there was no maid at all in the Salisbury kitchen.
+
+"Well, there was Libby," the mother answered at length, "the colored
+girl I had when you were born. She really was perfect, in a way. She
+was a clean darky, and such a cook! Daddy talks still of her fried
+chicken and blueberry pies! And she loved company, too. But, you
+see, Grandma Salisbury was with us then, and she paid a little girl
+to look after you, so Libby had really nothing but the kitchen and
+dining-room to care for. Afterward, just before Fred came, she got
+lazy and ugly, and I had to let her go. Canadian Annie was a
+wonderful girl, too," pursued Mrs. Salisbury, "but we only had her
+two months. Then she got a place where there were no children, and
+left on two days' notice. And when I think of the others!--the
+Hungarian girl who boiled two pairs of Fred's little brown socks and
+darkened the entire wash, sheets and napkins and all! And the
+colored girl who drank, and the girl who gave us boiled rice for
+dessert whenever I forgot to tell her anything else! And then Dad
+and I never will forget the woman who put pudding sauce on his
+mutton--dear me, dear me!" And Mrs. Salisbury laughed out at the
+memory. "Between her not knowing one thing, and not understanding a
+word we said, she was pretty trying all around!" she presently
+added. "And, of course, the instant you have them really trained
+they leave; and that's the end of that! One left me the day Stan was
+born, and another--and she was a nice girl, too--simply departed
+when you three were all down with scarlet fever, and left her bed
+unmade, and the tea cup and saucer from her breakfast on the end of
+the kitchen table! Luckily we had a wonderful nurse, and she simply
+took hold and saved the day."
+
+"Isn't it a wonder that there isn't a training school for house
+servants?" Sandy had inquired, youthful interest in her eye.
+
+"There's no such thing," her mother assured her positively, "as
+getting one who knows her business! And why? Why, because all the
+smart girls prefer to go into factories, and slave away for three or
+four dollars a week, instead of coming into good homes! Do Pearsall
+and Thompson ever have any difficulty in getting girls for the glove
+factory? Never! There's a line of them waiting, a block long, every
+time they advertise. But you may make up your mind to it, dear, if
+you get a good cook, she's wasteful or she's lazy, or she's
+irritable, or dirty, or she won't wait on table, or she slips out at
+night, and laughs under street lamps with some man or other! She's
+always on your mind, and she's always an irritation."
+
+"It just shows what a hopelessly stupid class you have to deal with,
+Mother," the younger Sandy had said. But at eighteen, she was not so
+sure.
+
+Alexandra frankly hated housework, and she did not know how to cook.
+She did not think it strange that it was hard to find a clever and
+well-trained young woman who would gladly spend all her time in
+housework and cooking for something less than three hundred dollars
+a year. Her eyes were beginning to be opened to the immense moral
+and social questions that lie behind the simple preference of
+American girls to work for men rather than for women. Household work
+was women's sphere, Sandy reasoned, and they had made it a sphere
+insufferable to other women. Something was wrong.
+
+Sandy was too young, and too mentally independent, to enter very
+sympathetically into her mother's side of the matter. The younger
+woman's attitude was tinged with affectionate contempt, and when the
+stupidity of the maid, or the inconvenience of having no maid at
+all, interfered with the smooth current of her life, or her busy
+comings and goings, she became impatient and intolerant.
+
+"Other people manage!" said Alexandra.
+
+"Who, for instance?" demanded her mother, in calm exasperation.
+
+"Oh, everyone--the Bernards, the Watermans! Doilies and finger
+bowls, and Elsie in a cap and apron!"
+
+"But Doctor and Mrs. Bernard are old people, dear, and the Watermans
+are three business women--no lunch, no children, very little
+company!"
+
+"Well, Grace Elliot, then!"
+
+"With two maids, Sandy. That's a very different matter!"
+
+"And is there any reason why we shouldn't have two?" asked Sandy,
+with youthful logic.
+
+"Ah, well, there you come to the question of expense, dear!" And
+Mrs. Salisbury dismissed the subject with a quiet air of triumph.
+
+But of course the topic came up again. It is the one household ghost
+that is never laid in such a family. Sometimes Kane Salisbury
+himself took a part in it.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me," he once demanded, in the days of the
+dreadfully incompetent maids who preceded Lizzie, "that it is
+becoming practically impossible to get a good general servant?"
+
+"Well, I wish you'd try it yourself," his wife answered, grimly
+quiet. "It's just about wearing me out! I don't know what has become
+of the good old maid-of-all-work," she presently pursued, with a
+sigh, "but she has simply vanished from the face of the earth. Even
+the greenest girls fresh from the other side begin to talk about
+having the washing put out, and to have extra help come in to wash
+windows and beat rugs! I don't know what we're coming to--you teach
+them to tell a blanket from a sheet, and how to boil coffee, and set
+a table, and then away they go to get more money somewhere. Dear me!
+Your father's mother used to have girls who had the wash on the line
+before eight o'clock--"
+
+"Yes, but then Grandma's house was simpler," Sandy contributed, a
+little doubtfully. "You know, Grandma never put on any style,
+Mother--"
+
+"Her house was always one of the most comfortable, most hospitable--
+"
+
+"Yes, I know, Mother!" Alexandra persisted eagerly. "But Fanny never
+had to answer the door, and Grandma used to let her leave the
+tablecloth on between meals--Grandma told me so herself!--and no
+fussing with doilies, or service plates under the soup plates, or
+glass saucers for dessert. And Grandma herself used to help wipe
+dishes, or sometimes set the table, and make the beds, if there was
+company--"
+
+"That may be," Mrs. Salisbury had the satisfaction of answering
+coldly. "Perhaps she did, although _I_ never remember hearing her
+say so. But my mother always had colored servants, and I never saw
+her so much as dust the piano!"
+
+"I suppose we couldn't simplify things, Sally? Cut out some of the
+extra touches?" suggested the head of the house.
+
+Mrs. Salisbury merely shook her head, compressing her lips firmly.
+It was quite difficult enough to keep things "nice," with two
+growing boys in the family, without encountering such opposition as
+this. A day or two later she went into New Troy, the nearest big
+city, and came back triumphantly with Lizzie.
+
+And at first Lizzie really did seem perfection. It was some weeks
+before Mrs. Salisbury realized that Lizzie was not truthful;
+absolutely reliable in money matters, yet Lizzie could not be
+believed in the simplest statement. Tasteless oatmeal, Lizzie glibly
+asseverated, had been well salted; weak coffee, or coffee as strong
+as brown paint, were the fault of the pot. Lizzie, rushing through
+dinner so that she might get out; Lizzie throwing out cold
+vegetables that "weren't worth saving"; Lizzie growing snappy and
+noisy at the first hint of criticism, somehow seemed worse sometimes
+than no servant at all.
+
+"I wonder--if we moved into New Troy, Kane," Mrs. Salisbury mused,
+"and got one of those wonderful modern apartments, with a gas stove,
+and a dumbwaiter, and hardwood floors, if Sandy and I couldn't
+manage everything? With a woman to clean and dinners downtown now
+and then, and a waitress in for occasions."
+
+"And me jumping up to change the salad plates, Mother!" Alexandra
+put in briskly. "And a pile of dishes to do every night!"
+
+"Gosh, let's not move into the city--" protested Stanford. "No
+tennis, no canoe, no baseball!"
+
+"And we know everyone in River Falls, we'd have to keep coming out
+here for parties!" Sandy added.
+
+"Well," Mrs. Salisbury sighed, "I admit that it is too much of a
+problem for me!" she said. "I know that I married your father on
+twenty dollars a week," she told the children severely, "and we
+lived in a dear little cottage, only eighteen dollars a month, and I
+did all my own work! And never in our lives have we lived so well.
+But the minute you get inexperienced help, your bills simply double,
+and inexperienced help means simply one annoyance after another. I
+give it up!"
+
+"Well, I'll tell you, Mother," Alexandra offered innocently;
+"perhaps we don't systematize enough ourselves. It ought to be all
+so well arranged and regulated that a girl would know what she was
+expected to do, and know that you had a perfect right to call her
+down for wasting or slighting things. Why couldn't women--a bunch of
+women, say--"
+
+"Why couldn't they form a set of household rules and regulations?"
+her mother intercepted smoothly. "Because--it's just one of the
+things that you young, inexperienced people can talk very easily
+about," she interrupted herself to say with feeling, "but it never
+seems to occur to any one of you that every household has its
+different demands and regulations. The market fluctuates, the size
+of a family changes--fixed laws are impossible! No. Lizzie is no
+worse than lots of others, better than the average. I shall hold on
+to her!"
+
+"Mrs. Sargent says that all these unnecessary demands have been
+instituted and insisted upon by women," said Alexandra. "She says
+that the secret of the whole trouble is that women try to live above
+their class, and make one servant appear to do the work of three--"
+
+The introduction of Mrs. Sargent's name was not a happy one.
+
+"Ellen Sargent," said Mrs. Salisbury icily, "is not a lady herself,
+in the true sense of the word, and she does very well to talk about
+class distinctions! She was his stenographer when Cyrus Sargent
+married her, and the daughter of a tannery hand. Now, just because
+she has millions, I am not going to be impressed by anything Ellen
+Sargent does or says!"
+
+"Mother, I don't think she meant quality by 'class,'" Sandy
+protested. "Everyone knows that Grandfather was General Stanford,
+and all that! But I think she meant, in a way, the money side of it,
+the financial division of people into classes!"
+
+"We won't discuss her," decided Mrs. Salisbury majestically. "The
+money standard is one I am not anxious to judge my friends by!"
+
+Still, with the rest of the family, Mrs. Salisbury was relieved when
+Lizzie, shortly after this, decided of her own accord to accept a
+better-paid position. "Unless, Mama says, you'd care to raise me to
+seven a week," said Lizzie, in parting.
+
+"No, no, I cannot pay that," Mrs. Salisbury said firmly and Lizzie
+accordingly left.
+
+Her place was taken by a middle-aged French woman, and whipped cream
+and the subtle flavor of sherry began to appear in the Salisbury
+bills of fare. Germaine had no idea whatever of time, and Sandy
+perforce must set the table whenever there was a company dinner
+afoot, and lend a hand with the last preparations as well. The
+kitchen was never really in order in these days, but Germaine cooked
+deliciously, and Mrs. Salisbury gave eight dinners and a club
+luncheon during the month of her reign. Then the French woman grew
+more and more irregular as to hours, and more utterly unreliable as
+to meals; sometimes the family fared delightfully, sometimes there
+was almost nothing for dinner. Germaine seemed to fade from sight,
+not entirely of her own volition, not really discharged; simply she
+was gone. A Norwegian girl came next, a good-natured, blundering
+creature whose English was just enough to utterly confuse herself
+and everyone else. Freda's mistakes were not half so funny in the
+making as Alexandra made them in anecdotes afterward; and Freda was
+given to weird chanting, accompanying herself with a banjo,
+throughout the evenings. Finally a blonde giant known as "Freda's
+cousin" came to see her, and Kane Salisbury, followed by his elated
+and excited boys, had to eject Freda's cousin early in the evening,
+while Freda wept and chattered to the ladies of the house. After
+that the cousin called often to ask for her, but Freda had vanished
+the day after this event, and the Salisburys never heard of her
+again.
+
+They tried another Norwegian, then a Polack, then a Scandinavian.
+Then they had a German man and wife for a week, a couple who
+asserted that they would work, without pay, for a good home. This
+was a most uncomfortable experience, unsuccessful from the first
+instant. Then came a low-voiced, good-natured South American
+negress, Marthe, not much of a cook, but willing and strong.
+
+July was mercilessly hot that year, thirty-one burning days of
+sunshine. Mrs. Salisbury was not a very strong woman, and she had a
+great many visitors to entertain. She kept Marthe, because the
+colored woman did not resent constant supervision, and an almost
+hourly change of plans. Mrs. Salisbury did almost all of the cooking
+herself, fussing for hours in the hot kitchen over the cold meats
+and salads and ices that formed the little informal cold suppers to
+which the Salisburys loved to ask their friends on Saturday and
+Sunday nights.
+
+Alexandra helped fitfully. She would put her pretty head into the
+kitchen doorway, perhaps to find her mother icing cake.
+
+"Listen, Mother; I'm going over to Con's. She's got that new serve
+down to a fine point! And I've done the boys' room and the guest
+room; it's all ready for the Cutters. And I put towels and soap in
+the bathroom, only you'll have to have Marthe wipe up the floor and
+the tub."
+
+"You're a darling child," the mother would say gratefully.
+
+"Darling nothing!" And Sandy, with her protest, would lay a cool
+cheek against her mother's hot one. "Do you have to stay out here,
+Mother?" she would ask resentfully. "Can't the Culled Lady do this?"
+
+"Well, I left her to watch it, and it burned," Mrs. Salisbury would
+say, "so now it has to be pared and frosted. Such a bother! But this
+is the very last thing, dear. You run along; I'll be out of here in
+two minutes!"
+
+But it was always something more than two minutes. Sometimes even
+Kane Salisbury was led to protest.
+
+"Can't we eat less, dear? Or differently? Isn't there some simple
+way of managing this week-end supper business? Now, Brewer--Brewer
+manages it awfully well. He has his man set out a big cold roast or
+two, cheese, and coffee, and a bowlful of salad, and beer. He'll get
+a fruit pie from the club sometimes, or pastries, or a pot of
+marmalade--"
+
+"Yes, indeed, we must try to simplify," Mrs. Salisbury would agree
+brightly. But after such a conversation as this she would go over
+her accounts very soberly indeed. "Roasts--cheeses--fruit pies!" she
+would say bitterly to herself. "Why is it that a man will spend as
+much on a single lunch for his friends as a woman is supposed to
+spend on her table for a whole week, and then ask her what on earth
+she has done with her money!"
+
+"Kane, I wish you would go over my accounts," she said one evening,
+in desperation. "Just suggest where you would cut down!"
+
+Mr. Salisbury ran his eye carelessly over the pages of the little
+ledger.
+
+"Roast beef, two-forty?" he presently read aloud, questioningly.
+
+"Twenty-two cents a pound," his wife answered simply. But the man's
+slight frown deepened.
+
+"Too much--too much!" he said, shaking his head.
+
+Mrs. Salisbury let him read on a moment, turn a page or two. Then
+she said, in a dead calm:
+
+"Do you think my roasts are too big, Kane?"
+
+"Too big? On the contrary," her husband answered briskly, "I like a
+big roast. Sometimes ours are skimpy-looking before they're even
+cut!"
+
+"Well!" Mrs. Salisbury said triumphantly.
+
+Her smile apprised her husband that he was trapped, and he put down
+the account book in natural irritation.
+
+"Well, my dear, it's your problem!" he said unsympathetically,
+returning to his newspaper. "I run my business, I expect you to run
+yours! If we can't live on our income, we'll have to move to a
+cheaper house, that's all, or take Stanford out of school and put
+him to work. Dickens says somewhere--and he never said a truer
+thing!" pursued the man of the house comfortably, "that, if you
+spend a sixpence less than your income every week, you are rich. If
+you spend a sixpence more, you never may expect to be anything but
+poor!"
+
+Mrs. Salisbury did not answer. She took up her embroidery, whose
+bright colors blurred and swam together through the tears that came
+to her eyes.
+
+"Never expect to feel anything but poor!" she echoed sadly to
+herself. "I am sure I never do! Things just seem to run away with
+me; I can't seem to get hold of them. I don't see where it's going
+to end!"
+
+"Mother," said Alexandra, coming in from the kitchen, "Marthe says
+that all that delicious chicken soup is spoiled. The idiot, she says
+that you left it in the pantry to cool, and she forgot to put it on
+the ice! Now, what shall we do, just skip soup, or get some beef
+extract and season it up?"
+
+"Skip soup," said Mr. Salisbury cheerfully.
+
+"We can't very well, dear," said his wife patiently, "because the
+dinner is just soup and a fish salad, and one needs the hot start in
+a perfectly cold supper. No. I'll go out."
+
+"Can't you just tell me what to do?" asked Alexandra impatiently.
+
+But her mother had gone. The girl sat on the arm of the deserted
+chair, swinging an idle foot.
+
+"I wish I could cook!" she fretted.
+
+"Can't you, Sandy?" her father asked.
+
+"Oh, some things! Rabbits and fudge and walnut wafers! But I mean
+that I wish I understood sauces and vegetables and seasoning, and
+getting things cooked all at the same moment! I don't mean that I'd
+like to do it, but I would like to know how. Now, Mother'll scare up
+some perfectly delicious soup for dinner, cream of something or
+other, and I could do it perfectly well, if only I knew how!"
+
+"Suppose I paid you a regular salary, Sandy--" her father was
+beginning, with the untiring hopefulness of the American father. But
+the girl interrupted vivaciously:
+
+"Dad, darling, that isn't practical! I'd love it for about two days.
+Then we'd settle right down to washing dishes, and setting tables,
+and dusting and sweeping, and wiping up floors--horrors, horrors,
+horrors!"
+
+She left her perch to take in turn an arm of her father's chair.
+
+"Well, what's the solution, pussy?" asked Kane Salisbury, keenly
+appreciative of the nearness of her youth and beauty.
+
+"It isn't that," said Sandy decidedly. "Of course," she pursued,
+"the Gregorys get along without a maid, and use a fireless cooker,
+and drink cereal coffee, but admit, darling, that you'd rather have
+me useless and frivolous as I am!--than Gertrude or Florence or
+Winifred Gregory! Why, when Floss was married, Dad, Gertrude played
+the piano, for music, and for refreshments they had raspberry ice-
+cream and chocolate layer cake!"
+
+"Well, I like chocolate layer cake," observed her father mildly. "I
+thought that was a very pretty wedding; the sisters in their light
+dresses--"
+
+"Dimity dresses at a wedding!" Alexandra reproached him, round-eyed.
+"And they are so boisterously proud of the fact that they live on
+their father's salary," she went on, arranging her own father's hair
+fastidiously; "it's positively offensive the way they bounce up to
+change plates and tell you how to make the neck of mutton
+appetizing, or the heart of a cow, or whatever it is! And their
+father pushes the chairs back, Dad, and helps roll up the napkins--
+I'd die if you ever tried it!"
+
+"But they all work, too, don't they?"
+
+"Work? Of course they work! And every cent of it goes into the bank.
+Winnie and Florence are buying gas shares, and Gertrude means to
+have a year's study in Europe, if you please!"
+
+"That doesn't sound very terrible," said Kane Salisbury, smiling.
+But some related thought darkened his eyes a moment later. "You
+wouldn't have much gas stock if I was taken, Pussy," said he.
+
+"No, darling, and let that be a lesson to you not to die!" his
+daughter said blithely. "But I could work, Dad," she added more
+seriously, "if Mother didn't mind so awfully. Not in the kitchen,
+but somewhere. I'd love to work in a settlement house."
+
+"Now, there you modern girls are," her father said. "Can't bear to
+clear away the dinner plates in your own houses, yet you'll
+cheerfully suggest going to live in the filthiest parts of the city,
+working, as no servant is ever expected to work, for people you
+don't know!"
+
+"I know it's absurd," Sandy agreed, smiling. Her answer was ready
+somewhere in her mind, but she could not quite find it. "But, you
+see, that's a new problem," she presently offered, "that's ours to-
+day, just as managing your house was Mother's when she married you.
+Circumstances have changed. I couldn't ever take up the kitchen
+question just as it presents itself to Mother. I--people my age
+don't believe in a servant class. They just believe in a division of
+labor, all dignified. If some girl I knew, Grace or Betty, say, came
+into our kitchen--and that reminds me!" she broke off suddenly.
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"Why, of something Owen--Owen Sargent was saying a few days ago. His
+mother's quite daffy about establishing social centers and clubs for
+servant girls, you know, and she's gotten into this new thing, a
+sort of college for servants. Now I'll ask Owen about it. I'll do
+that to-morrow. That's just what I'll do!"
+
+"Tell me about it," her father said. But Alexandra shook her head.
+
+"I don't honestly know anything about it, Dad. But Owen had a lot of
+papers and a sort of prospectus. His mother was wishing that she
+could try one of the graduates, but she keeps six or seven house
+servants, and it wouldn't be practicable. But I'll see. I never
+thought of us! And I'll bring Owen home to dinner to-morrow. Is that
+all right, Mother?" she asked, as her mother came back into the
+room.
+
+"Owen? Certainly, dear; we're always glad to see him," Mrs.
+Salisbury said, a shade too casually, in a tone well calculated
+neither to alarm nor encourage, balanced to keep events
+uninterruptedly in their natural course. But Alexandra was too deep
+in thought to notice a tone.
+
+"You'll see--this is something entirely new, and just what we need!"
+she said gaily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The constant visits of Owen Sargent, had he been but a few years
+older, and had Sandy been a few years older, would have filled Mrs.
+Salisbury's heart with a wild maternal hope. As it was, with Sandy
+barely nineteen, and Owen not quite twenty-two, she felt more
+tantalizing discomfort in their friendship than satisfaction. Owen
+was a dear boy, queer, of course, but fine in every way, and Sandy
+was quite the prettiest girl in River Falls; but it was far too soon
+to begin to hope that they would do the entirely suitable and
+acceptable thing of falling in love with each other. "That would be
+quite too perfect!" thought Mrs. Salisbury, watching them together.
+
+No; Owen was too rich to be overlooked by all sorts of other girls,
+scrupulous and unscrupulous. Every time he went with his mother for
+a week to Atlantic City or New York, Mrs. Salisbury writhed in
+apprehension of the thousand lures that must be spread on all sides
+about his lumbering feet. He was just the sweet, big, simple sort to
+be trapped by some little empty-headed girl, some little marplot
+clever enough to pretend an interest in the prison problem, or the
+free-milk problem, or some other industrial problem in which Owen
+had seen fit to interest himself. And her lovely, dignified Sandy,
+reflected the mother, a match for him in every way, beautiful, good,
+clever, just the woman to win him, by her own charm and the charms
+of children and home, away from the somewhat unnatural interests
+with which he had surrounded himself, must sit silent and watch him
+throw himself away.
+
+Sandy, of course, had never had any idea of Owen in this light, of
+that her mother was quite sure. Sandy treated him as she did her own
+brothers, frankly, despotically, delightfully. And perhaps it was
+wiser, after all, not to give the child a hint, for it was evident
+that the shy, gentle Owen was absolutely at home and happy in the
+Salisbury home; nothing would be gained by making Sandy feel self-
+conscious and responsible now.
+
+Mrs. Salisbury really did not like Owen Sargent very well, although
+his money made her honestly think she did. He had a wide, pleasant,
+but homely face, and an aureole of upstanding yellow hair, and a
+manner as unaffected as might have been expected from the child of
+his plain old genial father, and his mother, the daughter of a
+tanner. He lived alone, with his widowed mother, in a pleasant, old-
+fashioned house, set in park-like grounds that were the pride of
+River Falls. His mother often asked waitresses' unions and fresh-air
+homes to make use of these grounds for picnics, but Mrs. Salisbury
+knew that the house belonged to Owen, and she liked to dream of a
+day when Sandy's babies should tumble on those smooth lawns, and
+Sandy, erect and beautifully furred, should bring her own smart
+little motor car through that tall iron gateway.
+
+These dreams made her almost effusive in her manner to Owen, and
+Owen, who was no fool, understood perfectly what she was thinking of
+him; he understood his own energetic, busy mother; and he understood
+Sandy's mother, too. He knew that his money made him well worth any
+mother's attention.
+
+But, like her mother, he believed Sandy too young to have taken any
+cognizance of it. He thought the girl liked him as she liked anyone
+else, for his own value, and he sometimes dreamed shyly of her
+pleasure in suddenly realizing that Mrs. Owen Sargent would be a
+rich woman, the mistress of a lovely home, the owner of beautiful
+jewels.
+
+Both, however, were mistaken in Sandy. Her blue, blue eyes, so oddly
+effective under the silky fall of her straight, mouse-colored hair,
+were very keen. She knew exactly why her mother suggested that Owen
+should bring her here or there in the car, "Daddy and the boys and I
+will go in our old trap, just behind you!" She knew that Owen
+thought that her quick hand over his, in a game of hearts, the
+thoughtful stare of her demure eyes, across the dinner table, the
+help she accepted so casually, climbing into his big car--were all
+evidences that she was as unconscious of his presence as Stan was.
+But in reality the future for herself of which Sandy confidently
+dreamed was one in which, in all innocent complacency, she took her
+place beside Owen as his wife. Clumsy, wild-haired, bashful he might
+be at twenty-two, but the farsighted Sandy saw him ten years, twenty
+years later, well groomed, assured of manner, devotedly happy in his
+home life. She considered him entirely unable to take care of
+himself, he needed a good wife. And a good, true, devoted wife Sandy
+knew she would be, fulfilling to her utmost power all his lonely,
+little-boy dreams of birthday parties and Christmas revels.
+
+To do her justice, she really and deeply cared for him. Not with
+passion, for of that as yet she knew nothing, but with a real and
+absorbing affection. Sandy read "Love in a Valley" and the "Sonnets
+from the Portuguese" in these days, and thought of Owen. Now and
+then her well-disciplined little heart surprised her by an
+unexpected flutter in his direction.
+
+She duly brought him home with her to dinner on the evening after
+her little talk with her parents. Owen was usually to be found
+browsing about the region where Sandy played marches twice a week
+for sewing classes in a neighborhood house. They often met, and
+Sandy sometimes went to have tea with his mother, and sometimes, as
+to-day, brought him home with her.
+
+Owen had with him the letters, pamphlets and booklet issued by the
+American School of Domestic Science, and after dinner, while the
+Salisbury boys wrestled with their lessons, the three others and
+Owen gathered about the drawing-room table, in the late daylight,
+and thoroughly investigated the new institution and its claims.
+Sandy wedged her slender little person in between the two men. Mrs.
+Salisbury sat near by, reading what was handed to her. The older
+woman's attitude was one of dispassionate unbelief; she smiled a
+benign indulgence upon these newfangled ideas. But in her heart she
+felt the stirring of feminine uneasiness and resentment. It was HER
+sacred region, after all, into which these young people were probing
+so light-heartedly. These were her secrets that they were
+exploiting; her methods were to be disparaged, tossed aside.
+
+The booklet, with its imposing A.S.D.S. set out fair and plain upon
+a brown cover, was exhaustive. Its frontispiece was a portrait of
+one Eliza Slocumb Holley, founder of the school, and on its back
+cover it bore the vignetted photograph of a very pretty graduate, in
+apron and cap, with her broom and feather duster. In between these
+two pictures were pages and pages of information, dozens of
+pictures. There were delightful long perspectives of model kitchens,
+of vegetable gardens, orchards, and dairies. There were pictures of
+girls making jam, and sterilizing bottles, and arranging trays for
+the sick. There were girls amusing children and making beds. There
+were glimpses of the model flats, built into the college buildings,
+with gas stoves and dumb-waiters. And there were the usual pictures
+of libraries, and playgrounds, and tennis courts.
+
+"Such nice-looking girls!" said Sandy.
+
+"Oh, Mother says that they are splendid girls," Owen said, bashfully
+eager, "just the kind that go in for trained nursing, you know, or
+stenography, or bookkeeping."
+
+"They must be a solid comfort, those girls," said Mrs. Salisbury,
+leaning over to read certain pages with the others. "'First year,'"
+she read aloud. "'Care of kitchen, pantry, and utensils--fire-
+making--disposal of refuse--table-setting--service--care of
+furniture--cooking with gas--patent sweepers--sweeping--dusting--
+care of silver--bread--vegetables--puddings--'"
+
+"Help!" said Sandy. "It sounds like the essence of a thousand
+Mondays! No one could possibly learn all that in one year."
+
+"It's a long term, eleven months," her father said, deeply
+interested. "That's not all of the first year, either. But it's all
+practical enough."
+
+"What do they do the last year, Mother?"
+
+Mrs. Salisbury adjusted her glasses.
+
+"'Third year,'" she read obligingly. "'All soups, sauces, salads,
+ices and meats. Infant and invalid diet. Formal dinners, arranged by
+season. Budgets. Arrangement of work for one maid. Arrangement of
+work for two maids. Menus, with reference to expense, with reference
+to nourishment, with reference to attractiveness. Chart of suitable
+meals for children, from two years up. Table manners for children.
+Classic stories for children at bedtime. Flowers, their significance
+upon the table. Picnics--'"
+
+"But, no; there's something beyond that," Owen said. Mrs. Salisbury
+turned a page.
+
+"'Fourth Year. Post-graduate, not obligatory,'" she read. "'Unusual
+German, Italian, Russian and Spanish dishes. Translation of menus.
+Management of laundries, hotels and institutions. Work of a chef.
+Work of subordinate cooks. Ordinary poisons. Common dangers of
+canning. Canning for the market. Professional candy-making--'"
+
+"Can you beat it!" said Owen.
+
+"It's extraordinary!" Mrs. Salisbury conceded. Her husband asked the
+all-important question:
+
+"What do you have to pay for one of these paragons?"
+
+"It's all here," Mrs. Salisbury said. But she was distracted in her
+search of a scale of prices by the headlines of the various pages.
+"'Rules Governing Employers,'" she read, with amusement. "Isn't this
+too absurd? 'Employers of graduates of the A.S.D.S. will kindly
+respect the conditions upon which, and only upon which, contracts
+are based.'" She glanced down the long list of items. "'A
+comfortably furnished room,'" she read at random, "'weekly half
+holiday-access to nearest public library or family library--
+opportunity for hot bath at least twice weekly--two hours if
+possible for church attendance on Sunday--annual two weeks' holiday,
+or two holidays of one week each--full payment of salary in advance,
+on the first day of every month'--what a preposterous idea!" Mrs.
+Salisbury broke off to say. "How is one to know that she wouldn't
+skip off on the second?"
+
+"In that case the school supplies you with another maid for the
+unfinished term," explained Sandy, from the booklet.
+
+"Well--" the lady was still a little unsatisfied. "As if they didn't
+have privileges enough now!" she said. "It's the same old story: we
+are supposed to be pleasing them, not they us!"
+
+"'In a family where no other maid is kept,'" read Alexandra, "'a
+graduate will take entire charge of kitchen and dining room, go to
+market if required, do ordinary family washing and ironing, will
+clean bathroom daily, and will clean and sweep every other room in
+the house, and the halls, once thoroughly every week. She will be on
+hand to answer the door only one afternoon every week, besides
+Sunday--'"
+
+"What!" ejaculated Mrs. Salisbury.
+
+"I should like to know who does it on other days!" Alexandra added
+amazedly.
+
+"Don't you think that's ridiculous, Kane?" his wife asked eagerly.
+
+"We-el," the man of the house said temperately, "I don't know that I
+do. You see, otherwise the girl has a string tied on her all the
+time. People in our position, after all, needn't assume that we're
+too good to open our own door--"
+
+"That's exactly it, sir," Owen agreed eagerly; "Mother says that
+that's one of the things that have upset the whole system for so
+long! Just the convention that a lady can't open her own door--"
+
+"But we haven't found the scale of wages yet--" Mrs. Salisbury
+interrupted sweetly but firmly. Alexandra, however, resumed the
+recital of the duties of one maid.
+
+"'She will not be expected to assume the care of young children,'"
+she read, "nor to sleep in the room with them. She will not be
+expected to act as chaperone or escort at night. She--'"
+
+"It DOESN'T say that, Sandy!"
+
+"Oh, yes, it does! And, listen! 'NOTE. Employers are respectfully
+requested to maintain as formal an attitude as possible toward the
+maid. Any intimacy, or exchange of confidences, is especially to be
+avoided'"--Alexandra broke off to laugh, and her mother laughed with
+her, but indignantly.
+
+"Insulting!" she said lightly. "Does anyone suppose for an instant
+that this is a serious experiment?"
+
+"Come, that doesn't sound very ridiculous to me," her husband said.
+"Plenty of women do become confidential with their maids, don't
+they?"
+
+"Dear me, how much you do know about women!" Alexandra said, kissing
+the top of her father's head. "Aren't you the bad old man!"
+
+"No; but one might hope that an institution of this kind would put
+the American servant in her place," Mrs. Salisbury said seriously,
+"instead of flattering her and spoiling her beyond all reason. I
+take my maid's receipt for salary in advance; I show her the
+bathroom and the library--that's the idea, is it? Why, she might be
+a boarder! Next, they'll be asking for a place at the table and an
+hour's practice on the piano."
+
+"Well, the original American servant, the 'neighbor's girl,' who
+came in to help during the haying season, and to put up the
+preserves, probably did have a place at the table," Mr. Salisbury
+submitted mildly.
+
+"Mother thinks that America never will have a real servant class,"
+Owen added uncertainly; "that is, until domestic service is elevated
+to the--the dignity of office work, don't you know? Until it
+attracts the nicer class of women, don't you know? Mother says that
+many a good man's fear of old age would be lightened, don't you
+know?--if he felt that, in case he lost his job, or died, his
+daughters could go into good homes, and grow up under the eye of
+good women, don't you know?"
+
+"Very nice, Owen, but not very practical!" Mrs. Salisbury said, with
+her indulgent, motherly smile. "Oh, dear me, for the good old days
+of black servants, and plenty of them!" she sighed. For though Mrs.
+Salisbury had been born some years after the days of plenty known to
+her mother on her grandfather's plantation, before the war, she was
+accustomed to detailed recitals of its grandeurs.
+
+"Here we are!" said Alexandra, finding a particular page that was
+boldly headed "Terms."
+
+"'For a cook and general worker, no other help,' she read, "'thirty
+dollars per month--'"
+
+"Not so dreadful," her father said, pleasantly surprised.
+
+"But, listen, Dad! Thirty dollars for a family of two, and an
+additional two dollars and a half monthly for each other member of
+the family. That would make ours thirty-seven dollars and a half,
+wouldn't it?" she computed swiftly.
+
+"Awful! Impossible!" Mrs. Salisbury said instantly, almost in
+relief. The discussion made her vaguely uneasy. What did these
+casual amateurs know about the domestic problem, anyway? Kane, who
+was always anxious to avoid details; Sandy, all youthful enthusiasm
+and ignorance, and Owen Sargent, quoting his insufferable mother?
+For some moments she had been fighting an impulse to soothe them all
+with generalities. "Never mind; it's always been a problem, and it
+always will be! These new schemes are all very well, but don't
+trouble your dear heads about it any longer!"
+
+Now she sank back, satisfied. The whole thing was but a mad, Utopian
+dream. Thirty-seven dollars indeed! "Why, one could get two good
+servants for that!" thought Mrs. Salisbury, with the same sublime
+faith with which she had told her husband, in poorer days, years
+ago, that, if they could but afford her, she knew they could get a
+"fine girl" for three dollars a week. The fact that the "fine girl"
+did not apparently exist did not at all shake Mrs. Salisbury's
+confidence that she could get two "good girls." Her hope in the
+untried solution rose with every failure.
+
+"Thirty-seven is steep," said Kane Salisbury slowly. "However! What
+do we pay now, Mother?"
+
+"Five a week," said that lady inflexibly.
+
+"But we paid Germaine more," said Alexandra eagerly. "And didn't you
+pay Lizzie six and a half?"
+
+"The last two months I did, yes," her mother agreed unwillingly.
+"But that comes only to twenty-six or seven," she added.
+
+"But, look here," said Owen, reading. "Here it says: 'NOTE. Where a
+graduate is required to manage on a budget, it is computed that she
+saves the average family from two to seven dollars weekly on food
+and fuel bills.'"
+
+"Now that begins to sound like horse sense," Mr. Salisbury began.
+But the mistress of the house merely smiled, and shook a dubious
+head, and the younger members of the family here created a diversion
+by reminding their sister's guest, with animation, that he had half-
+asked them to go out for a short ride in his car. Alexandra
+accordingly ran for a veil, and the young quartette departed with
+much noise, Owen stuffing his pamphlets and booklet into his pocket
+before he went.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Salisbury settled down contentedly to double Canfield,
+the woman crushing out the last flicker of the late topic with a
+placid shake of the head, when the man asked her for her honest
+opinion of the American School of Domestic Science. "I don't truly
+think it's at all practical, dear," said Mrs. Salisbury regretfully.
+"But we might watch it for a year or two and go into the question
+again some time, if you like. Especially if some one else has tried
+one of these maids, and we have had a chance to see how it goes!"
+
+The very next morning Mrs. Salisbury awakened with a dull headache.
+Hot sunlight was streaming into the bedroom, an odor of coffee,
+drifting upstairs, made her feel suddenly sick. Her first thought
+was that she COULD not have Sandy's two friends to luncheon, and she
+COULD not keep a shopping and tea engagement with a friend of her
+own! She might creep through the day somehow, but no more.
+
+She dressed slowly, fighting dizziness, and went slowly downstairs,
+sighing at the sight of disordered music and dust in the dining-
+room, the sticky chafing-dish and piled plates in the pantry. In the
+kitchen was a litter of milk bottles, saucepans, bread and crumbs
+and bread knife encroaching upon a basket of spilled berries, egg
+shells and melting bacon. The blue sides of the coffee-pot were
+stained where the liquid and grounds had bubbled over it. Marthe was
+making toast, the long fork jammed into a plate hole of the range.
+Mrs. Salisbury thought that she had never seen sunlight so
+mercilessly hot and bright before--
+
+"Rotten coffee!" said Mr. Salisbury cheerfully, when his wife took
+her place at the table.
+
+"And she NEVER uses the poacher!" Alexandra added reproachfully.
+"And she says that the cream is sour because the man leaves it at
+half-past four, right there in the sunniest corner of the porch--
+can't he have a box or something, Mother?"
+
+"Gosh, I wouldn't care what she did if she'd get a move on," said
+Stanford frankly. "She's probably asleep out there, with her head in
+the frying pan!"
+
+Mrs. Salisbury went into the kitchen again. She had to pause in the
+pantry because the bright squares of the linoleum, and the brassy
+faucets, and the glare of the geraniums outside the window seemed to
+rush together for a second.
+
+Marthe was on the porch, exchanging a few gay remarks with the
+garbage man before shutting the side door after him. The big stove
+was roaring hot, a thick odor of boiling clothes showed that Marthe
+was ready for her cousin Nancy, the laundress, who came once a week.
+A saucepan deeply gummed with cereal was soaking beside the hissing
+and smoking frying pan Mrs. Salisbury moved the frying pan, and the
+quick heat of the coal fire rushed up at her face--
+
+"Why," she whispered, opening anxious eyes after what seemed a long
+time, "who fainted?"
+
+A wheeling and rocking mass of light and shadow resolved itself into
+the dining-room walls, settled and was still. She felt the soft
+substance of a sofa pillow under her head, the hard lump that was
+her husband's arm supporting her shoulders.
+
+"That's it--now she's all right!" said Kane Salisbury, his kind,
+concerned face just above her own. Mrs. Salisbury shifted heavy,
+languid eyes, and found Sandy.
+
+"Darling, you fell!" the daughter whispered. White-lipped, pitiful,
+with tears still on her round cheeks, Sandy was fanning her mother
+with a folded newspaper.
+
+"Well, how silly of me!" Mrs. Salisbury said weakly. She sighed,
+tried too quickly to sit up, and fainted quietly away again.
+
+This time she opened her eyes in her own bed, and was made to drink
+something sharp and stinging, and directed not to talk. While her
+husband and daughter were hanging up things, and reducing the
+tumbled room to order, the doctor arrived.
+
+"Dr. Hollister, I call this an imposition!" protested the invalid
+smilingly. "I have been doing a little too much, that's all! But
+don't you dare say the word rest-cure to me again!"
+
+But Doctor Hollister did not smile; there was no smiling in the
+house that day.
+
+"Mother may have to go away," Alexandra told anxious friends, very
+sober, but composed. "Mother may have to take a rest-cure," she said
+a day or two later.
+
+"But you won't let them send me to a hospital again, Kane?" pleaded
+his wife one evening. "I almost die of lonesomeness, wondering what
+you and the children are doing! Couldn't I just lie here? Marthe and
+Sandy can manage somehow, and I promise you I truly won't worry,
+just lie here like a queen!"
+
+"Well, perhaps we'll give you a trial," smiled Kane Salisbury, very
+much enjoying an hour of quiet, at his wife's bedside. "But don't
+count on Marthe. She's going."
+
+"Marthe is?" Mrs. Salisbury only leaned a little more heavily on the
+strong arm that held her, and laughed comfortably. "I refuse to
+concern myself with such sordid matters," she said. "But why?"
+
+"Because I've got a new girl, hon."
+
+"You have!" She shifted about to stare at him, aroused by his tone.
+Light came. "You've not gotten one of those college cooks, have you,
+Kane?" she demanded. "Oh, Kane! Not at thirty-seven dollars a month!
+Oh, you have, you wicked, extravagant boy!"
+
+"Cheaper than a trained nurse, petty!"
+
+Mrs. Salisbury was still shaking a scandalized head, but he could
+see the pleasure and interest in her eyes. She sank back in her
+pillows, but kept her thin fingers gripped tightly over his.
+
+"How you do spoil me, Tip!" The name took him back across many years
+to the little eighteen-dollar cottage and the days before Sandy
+came. He looked at his wife's frail little figure, the ruffled
+frills that showed under her loose wrapper, at throat and elbows.
+There was something girlish still about her hanging dark braid, her
+big eyes half visible in the summer twilight.
+
+"Well, you may depend upon it, you're in for a good long course of
+spoiling now, Miss Sally!" said he.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Justine Harrison, graduate servant of the American School of
+Domestic Science, arrived the next day. If Mrs. Salisbury was half
+consciously cherishing an expectation of some one as crisp and
+cheerful as a trained nurse might have been, she was disappointed.
+Justine was simply a nice, honest-looking American country girl, in
+a cheap, neat, brown suit and a dreadful hat. She smiled
+appreciatively when Alexandra showed her her attractive little room,
+unlocked what Sandy saw to be a very orderly trunk, changed her hot
+suit at once for the gray gingham uniform, and went to Mrs.
+Salisbury's room with great composure, for instructions. In passing,
+Alexandra--feeling the situation to be a little odd, yet bravely,
+showed her the back stairway and the bathroom, and murmured
+something about books being in the little room off the drawing-room
+downstairs. Justine smiled brightly.
+
+"Oh, I brought several books with me," she said, "and I subscribe to
+two weekly magazines and one monthly. So usually I have enough to
+read."
+
+"How do you do? You look very cool and comfortable, Justine. Now,
+you'll have to find your own way about downstairs. You'll see the
+coffee next to the bread box, and the brooms are in the laundry
+closet. Just do the best you can. Mr. Salisbury likes dry toast in
+the morning--eggs in some way. We get eggs from the milkman; they
+seem fresher. But you have to tell him the day before. And I
+understood that you'll do most of the washing? Yes. My old Nancy was
+here day before yesterday, so there's not much this week." It was in
+some such disconnected strain as this that Mrs. Salisbury welcomed
+and initiated the new maid.
+
+Justine bowed reassuringly.
+
+"I'll find everything, Madam. And do you wish me to manage and to
+market for awhile until you are about again?"
+
+The invalid sent a pleading glance to Sandy.
+
+"Oh, I think my daughter will do that," she said.
+
+"Oh, now, why, Mother?" Sandy asked, in affectionate impatience. "I
+don't begin to know as much about it as Justine probably does. Why
+not let her?"
+
+"If Madam will simply tell me what sum she usually spends on the
+table," said Justine, "I will take the matter in hand."
+
+Mrs. Salisbury hesitated. This was the very stronghold of her
+authority. It seemed terrible to her, indelicate, to admit a
+stranger.
+
+"Well, it varies a little," she said restlessly. "I am not
+accustomed to spending a set sum." She addressed her daughter. "You
+see, I've been paying Nancy every week, dear," said she, "and the
+other laundry. And little things come up--"
+
+"What sum would be customary, in a family this size?" Alexandra
+asked briskly of the graduate servant.
+
+Justine was business-like.
+
+"Seven dollars for two persons is the smallest sum we are allowed to
+handle," she said promptly. "After that each additional person calls
+for three dollars weekly in our minimum scale. Four or five dollars
+a week per person, not including the maid, is the usual allowance."
+
+"Mercy! Would that be twenty dollars for table alone?" the mistress
+asked. "It is never that now, I think. Perhaps twice a week," she
+said, turning to Alexandra, "your father gives me five dollars at
+the breakfast table--"
+
+"But, Mother, you telephone and charge at the market, and Lewis &
+Sons, too, don't you?" Sandy asked.
+
+"Well, yes, that's true. Yes, I suppose it comes to fully twenty-
+five dollars a week, when you think of it. Yes, it probably comes to
+more. But it never seems so much, somehow. Well, suppose we say
+twenty-five--"
+
+"Twenty-five, I'll tell Dad." Alexandra confirmed it briskly.
+
+"I used to keep accounts, years ago," Mrs. Salisbury said
+plaintively. "Your father--" and again she turned to her daughter,
+as if to make this revelation of her private affairs less
+distressing by so excluding the stranger. "Your father has always
+been the most generous of men," she said; "he always gives me more
+money if I need it, and I try to do the best I can." And a little
+annoyed, in her weakness and helplessness by this business talk, she
+lay back on her pillow, and closed her eyes.
+
+"Twenty-five a week, then!" Alexandra said, closing the talk by
+jumping up from a seat on her mother's bed, and kissing the
+invalid's eyes in parting. Justine, who had remained standing,
+followed her down to the kitchen, where, with cheering promptitude,
+the new maid fell upon preparations for dinner. Alexandra rather
+bashfully suggested what she had vaguely planned for dinner; Justine
+nodded intelligently at each item; presently Alexandra left her,
+busily making butter-balls, and went upstairs to report.
+
+"Nothing sensational about her," said Sandy to her mother, "but she
+takes hold! She's got some bleaching preparation of soda or
+something drying on the sink-board; she took the shelf out of the
+icebox the instant she opened it, and began to scour it while she
+talked. She's got a big blue apron on, and she's hung a nice clean
+white one on the pantry door."
+
+There was nothing sensational about the tray which Justine carried
+up to the sick room that evening--nothing sensational in the dinner
+which was served to the diminished family. But the Salisbury family
+began that night to speak of Justine as the "Treasure."
+
+"Everything hot and well seasoned and nicely served," said the man
+of the house in high satisfaction, "and the woman looks like a
+servant, and acts like one. Sandy says she's turning the kitchen
+upside down, but, I say, give her her head!"
+
+The Treasure, more by accident than design, was indeed given her
+head in the weeks that followed, for Mrs. Salisbury steadily
+declined into a real illness, and the worried family was only too
+glad to delegate all the domestic problems to Justine. The invalid's
+condition, from "nervous breakdown" became "nervous prostration,"
+and August was made terrible for the loving little group that
+watched her by the cruel fight with typhoid fever into which Mrs.
+Salisbury's exhausted little body was drawn. Weak as she was
+physically, her spirit never failed her; she met the overwhelming
+charges bravely, rallied, sank, rallied again and lived. Alexandra
+grew thin, if prettier than ever, and Owen Sargent grew bold and big
+and protecting to meet her need. The boys were "angels," their
+sister said, helpful, awed and obedient, but the children's father
+began to stoop a little and to show gray in the thick black hair at
+his temples.
+
+Soberly, sympathetically, Justine steered her own craft through all
+the storm and confusion of the domestic crisis. Trays appeared and
+disappeared without apparent effort. Hot and delicious meals were
+ready at the appointed hours, whether the pulse upstairs went up or
+down. Tradespeople were paid; there was always ice; there was always
+hot water. The muffled telephone never went unanswered, the doctor
+never had to ring twice for admittance. If fruit was sent up to the
+invalid, it was icy cold; if soup was needed, it appeared, smoking
+hot, and guiltless of even one floating pinpoint of fat.
+
+Alexandra and the trained nurse always found the kitchen the same:
+orderly, aired, silent, with Justine, a picture of domestic
+efficiency, sitting by the open window, or on the shady side porch,
+shelling peas or peeling apples, or perhaps wiping immaculate
+glasses with an immaculate cloth at the sink. The ticking clock, the
+shining range, the sunlight lying in clean-cut oblongs upon the
+bright linoleum, Justine's smoothly braided hair and crisp percales,
+all helped to form a picture wonderfully restful and reassuring in
+troubled days.
+
+Alexandra, tired with a long vigil in the sick room, liked to slip
+down late at night, to find Justine putting the last touches to the
+day's good work. A clean checked towel would be laid over the
+rising, snowy mound of dough; the bubbling oatmeal was locked in the
+fireless cooker, doors were bolted, window shades drawn. There was
+an admirable precision about every move the girl made.
+
+The two young women liked to chat together, and sometimes, when some
+important message took her to Justine's door in the evening,
+Alexandra would linger, pleasantly affected by the trim little
+apartment, the roses in a glass vase, Justine's book lying open-
+faced on the bed, or her unfinished letter waiting on the table. For
+all exterior signs, at these times, she might have been a guest in
+the house.
+
+Promptly, on every Saturday evening, the Treasure presented her
+account book to Mr. Salisbury. There was always a small balance,
+sometimes five dollars, sometimes one, but Justine evidently had
+well digested Dickens' famous formula for peace of mind.
+
+"You're certainly a wonder, Justine!" said the man of the house more
+than once. "How do you manage it?"
+
+"Oh, I cut down in dozens of ways," the girl returned, with her
+grave smile. "You don't notice it, but I know. You have kidney
+stews, and onion soups, and cherry pies, instead of melons and
+steaks and ice-cream, that's all!"
+
+"And everyone just as well pleased," he said, in real admiration. "I
+congratulate you."
+
+"It's only what we are all taught at college," Justine assured him.
+"I'm just doing what they told me to! It's my business."
+
+"It's pretty big business, and it's been waiting a long while," said
+Kane Salisbury.
+
+When Mrs. Salisbury began to get well, she began to get very hungry.
+This was plain sailing for Justine, and she put her whole heart into
+the dainty trays that went upstairs three times a day. While she was
+enjoying them, Mrs. Salisbury liked to draw out her clever maid, and
+the older woman and the young one had many a pleasant talk together.
+Justine told her mistress that she had been country-born and bred,
+and had grown up with a country girl's longing for nice surroundings
+and education of the better sort.
+
+"My name is not Justine at all," she said smilingly, "nor Harrison,
+either, although I chose it because I have cousins of that name. We
+are all given names when we go to college and take them with us.
+Until the work is recognized, as it must be some day, as dignified
+and even artistic, we are advised to sink our own identities in this
+way."
+
+"You mean that Harrison isn't your name?" Mrs. Salisbury felt this
+to be really a little alarming, in some vague way.
+
+"Oh, no! And Justine was given me as a number might have been."
+
+"But what is your name?" The question fell from Mrs. Salisbury as
+naturally as an "Ouch!" would have fallen had somebody dropped a
+lighted match on her hand. "I had no idea of that!" she went on
+artlessly. "But I suppose you told Mr. Salisbury?"
+
+The luncheon was finished, and now Justine stood up, and picked up
+the tray.
+
+"No. That's the very point. We use our college names," she
+reiterated simply. "Will you let me bring you up a little more
+custard, Madam?"
+
+"No, thank you," Mrs. Salisbury said, after a second's pause. She
+looked a little thoughtful as Justine walked away. There is no real
+reason why one's maid should not wear an assumed name, of course.
+Still--
+
+"What a ridiculous thing that college must be!" said Mrs. Salisbury,
+turning comfortably in her pillows. "But she certainly is a splendid
+cook!"
+
+About this point, at least, there was no argument. Justine did not
+need cream or sherry, chopped nuts or mushroom sauces to make simple
+food delicious. She knew endless ways in which to serve food;
+potatoes became a nightly surprise, macaroni was never the same,
+rice had a dozen delightful roles. Because the family enjoyed her
+maple custard or almond cake, she did not, as is the habit with
+cooks, abandon every other flavoring for maple or almond. She was
+following a broader schedule than that supplied by the personal
+tastes of the Salisburys, and she went her way serenely.
+
+Not so much as a teaspoonful of cold spinach was wasted in these
+days. Justine's "left-over" dishes were quite as good as anything
+else she cooked; her artful combinations, her garnishes of pastry,
+her illusive seasoning, her enveloping and varied sauces disguised
+and transformed last night's dinner into a real feast to-night.
+
+The Treasure went to market only twice a week, on Saturdays and
+Tuesdays. She planned her meals long beforehand, with the aid of
+charts brought from college, and paid cash for everything she
+bought. She always carried a large market basket on her arm on these
+trips, and something in her trim, strong figure and clean gray gown,
+as she started off, appealed to a long-slumbering sense of house-
+holder's pride in Mr. Salisbury. It seemed good to him that a person
+who worked so hard for him and for his should be so bright and
+contented looking, should like her life so well.
+
+Late in September Mrs. Salisbury came downstairs again to a spotless
+drawing-room and a dining-room gay with flowers. Dinner was a little
+triumph, and after dinner she was escorted to a deep chair, and
+called upon to admire new papers and hangings, cleaned rugs and a
+newly polished floor.
+
+"You are wonderful, wonderful people, every one of you!" said the
+convalescent, smiling eyes roving about her. "Grass paper, Kane, and
+such a dear border!" she said. "And everything feeling so clean! And
+my darling girl writing letters and seeing people all these weeks!
+And my boys so good! And dear old Daddy carrying the real burden for
+everyone--what a dreadfully spoiled woman I am! And Justine--come
+here a minute, Justine--"
+
+The Treasure, who was clearing the dining-room table, came in, and
+smiled at the pretty group, mother and father, daughter and sons,
+all rejoicing in being well and together again.
+
+"I don't know how I am ever going to thank you, Justine," said Mrs.
+Salisbury, with a little emotion. She took the girl's hand in both
+her transparent white ones. "Do believe that I appreciate it," she
+said. "It has been a comfort to me, even when I was sickest, even
+when I apparently didn't know anything, to know that you were here,
+that everything was running smoothly and comfortably, thanks to you.
+We could not have managed without you!"
+
+Justine returned the finger pressure warmly, also a little stirred.
+
+"Why, it's been a real pleasure," she said a little huskily. She had
+to accept a little chorus of thanks from the other members of the
+family before, blushing very much and smiling, too, she went back to
+her work.
+
+"She really has managed everything," Kane Salisbury told his wife
+later. "She handles all the little monthly bills, telephone and gas
+and so on; seems to take it as a matter of course that she should."
+
+"And what shall I do now, Kane? Go on that way, for a while anyway?"
+asked his wife.
+
+"Oh, by all means, dear! You must take things easy for a while. By
+degrees you can take just as much or as little as you want, with the
+managing."
+
+"You dear old idiot," the lady said tenderly, "don't worry about
+that! It will all come about quite naturally and pleasantly."
+
+Indeed, it was still a relief to depend heavily upon Justine. Mrs.
+Salisbury was quite bewildered by the duties that rose up on every
+side of her; Sandy's frocks for the fall, the boys' school suits,
+calls that must be made, friends who must be entertained, and the
+opening festivities of several clubs to which she belonged.
+
+She found things running very smoothly downstairs, there seemed to
+be not even the tiniest flaw for a critical mistress to detect, and
+the children had added a bewildering number of new names to their
+lists of favorite dishes. Justine was asked over and over again for
+her Manila curry, her beef and kidney pie, her scones and German
+fruit tarts, and for a brown and crisp and savory dish in which the
+mistress of the house recognized, under the title of chou farci, an
+ordinary cabbage as a foundation.
+
+"Oh, let's not have just chickens or beef," Sandy would plead when a
+company dinner was under discussion. "Let's have one of Justine's
+fussy dishes. Leave it to Justine!"
+
+For the Treasure obviously enjoyed company dinner parties, and it
+was fascinating to Sandy to see how methodically, and with what
+delightful leisure, she prepared for them. Two or three days
+beforehand her cake-making, silver-polishing, sweeping and cleaning
+were well under way, and the day of the event itself was no busier
+than any other day.
+
+Yet it was on one of these occasions that Mrs. Salisbury first had
+what she felt was good reason to criticize Justine. During a brief
+absence from home of both boys, their mother planned a rather formal
+dinner. Four of her closest friends, two couples, were asked, and
+Owen Sargent was invited by Sandy to make the group an even eight.
+This was as many as the family table accommodated comfortably, and
+seemed quite an event. Ordinarily the mistress of the house would
+have been fussing for some days beforehand, in her anxiety to have
+everything go well, but now, with Justine's brain and Justine's
+hands in command of the kitchen end of affairs, she went to the
+other extreme, and did not give her own and Sandy's share of the
+preparations a thought until the actual day of the dinner.
+
+For, as was stipulated in her bond, except for a general cleaning
+once a week, the Treasure did no work downstairs outside of the
+dining-room and kitchen, and made no beds at any time. This meant
+that the daughter of the house must spend at least an hour every
+morning in bed-making, and perhaps another fifteen minutes in that
+mysteriously absorbing business known as "straightening" the living
+room. Usually Sandy was very faithful to these duties; more, she
+whisked through them cheerfully, in her enthusiastic eagerness that
+the new domestic experiment should prove a success.
+
+But for a morning or two before this particular dinner she had
+shirked her work. Perhaps the novelty of it was wearing off a
+little. There was a tennis tournament in progress at the Burning
+Woods Country Club, two miles away from River Falls, and Sandy, who
+was rather proud of her membership in this very smart organization,
+did not want to miss a moment of it. Breakfast was barely over
+before somebody's car was at the door to pick up Miss Salisbury, who
+departed in a whirl of laughter and a flutter of bright veils, to be
+gone, sometimes, for the entire day.
+
+She had gone in just this way on the morning of the dinner, and her
+mother, who had quite a full program of her own for the morning, had
+had breakfast in bed. Mrs. Salisbury came downstairs at about ten
+o'clock to find the dining-room airing after a sweeping; curtains
+pinned back, small articles covered with a dust cloth, chairs at all
+angles. She went on to the kitchen, where Justine was beating
+mayonnaise.
+
+"Don't forget chopped ice for the shaker, the last thing," Mrs.
+Salisbury said, adding, with a little self-conscious rush, "And, oh,
+by the way, Justine, I see that Miss Alexandra has gone off again,
+without touching the living room. Yesterday I straightened it a
+little bit, but I have two club meetings this morning, and I'm
+afraid I must fly. If--if she comes in for lunch, will you remind
+her of it?"
+
+"Will she be back for lunch? I thought she said she would not,"
+Justine said, in honest surprise.
+
+"No; come to think of it, she won't," her mother admitted, a little
+flatly. "She put her room and her brothers' room in order," she
+added inconsequently.
+
+Justine did not answer, and Mrs. Salisbury went slowly out of the
+kitchen, annoyance rising in her heart. It was all very well for
+Sandy to help out about the house, but this inflexible idea of
+holding her to it was nonsense!
+
+Ruffled, she went up to her room. Justine had carried away the
+breakfast tray, but there were towels and bath slippers lying about,
+a litter of mail on the bed, and Mr. Salisbury's discarded linen
+strewn here and there. The dressers were in disorder, window
+curtains were pinned back for more air, and the coverings of the
+twin beds thrown back and trailing on the floor. Fifteen minutes'
+brisk work would have straightened the whole, but Mrs. Salisbury
+could not spare the time just then. The morning was running away
+with alarming speed; she must be dressed for a meeting at eleven
+o'clock, and, like most women of her age, she found dressing a slow
+and troublesome matter; she did not like to be hurried with her
+brushes and cold creams, her ruffles and veil.
+
+The thought of the unmade beds did not really trouble her when, trim
+and dainty, she went off in a friend's car to the club at eleven
+o'clock, but when she came back, nearly two hours later, it was
+distinctly an annoyance to find her bedroom still untouched. She was
+tired then, and wanted her lunch; but instead she replaced her
+street dress with a loose house gown, and went resolutely to work.
+
+Musing over her solitary luncheon, she found the whole thing a
+little absurd. There was still the drawing-room to be put in order,
+and no reason in the world why Justine should not do it. The girl
+was not overworked, and she was being paid thirty-seven dollars and
+fifty cents every month! Justine was big and strong, she could toss
+the little extra work off without any effort at all.
+
+She wondered why it is almost a physical impossibility for a nice
+woman to ask a maid the simplest thing in the world, if she is
+fairly certain that that maid will be ungracious about it.
+
+"Dear me!" thought Mrs. Salisbury, eating her chop and salad, her
+hot muffin and tart without much heart to appreciate these
+delicacies, "How much time I have spent in my life, going through
+imaginary conversations with maids! Why couldn't I just step to the
+pantry door and say, in a matter-of-fact tone, 'I'm afraid I must
+ask you to put the sitting-room in order, Justine. Miss Sandy has
+apparently forgotten all about it. I'll see that it doesn't occur
+again.' And I could add--now that I think of it--'I will pay you for
+your extra time, if you like, and if you will remind me at the end
+of the month.'"
+
+"Well, she may not like it, but she can't refuse," was her final
+summing up. She went out to the kitchen with a deceptive air of
+composure.
+
+Justine's occupation, when Mrs. Salisbury found her, strengthened
+the older woman's resolutions. The maid, in a silent and spotless
+kitchen, was writing a letter. Sheets of paper were strewn on the
+scoured white wood of the kitchen table; the writer, her chin cupped
+in her hand, was staring dreamily out of the kitchen window. She
+gave her mistress an absent smile, then laid down her pen and stood
+up.
+
+"I'm writing here," she explained, "so that I can catch the milkman
+for the cream."
+
+Mrs. Salisbury knew that it was useless to ask if everything was in
+readiness for the evening's event. From where she stood she could
+see piles of plates already neatly ranged in the warming oven,
+peeled potatoes were soaking in ice water in a yellow bowl, and the
+parsley that would garnish the big platter was ready, crisp and
+fresh in a glass of water.
+
+"Well, you look nice and peaceful," smiled the mistress. "I am just
+going to dress for a little tea, and I may have to look in at the
+opening of the Athenaeum Club," she went on, fussing with a frill at
+her wrist, "so I may be as late as five. But I'll bring some flowers
+when I come. Miss Alexandra will probably be at home by that time,
+but if she isn't--if she isn't, perhaps you would just go in and
+straighten the living room, Justine? I put things somewhat in order
+yesterday, and dusted a little, but, of course, things get scattered
+about, and it needs a little attention. She may of course be back in
+time to do it--"
+
+Her voice drifted away into casual silence. She looked at Justine
+expectantly, confidently. The maid flushed uncomfortably.
+
+"I'm sorry," she said frankly. "But that's against one of our rules,
+you know. I am not supposed to--"
+
+"Not ordinarily, I understand that," Mrs. Salisbury agreed quickly.
+"But in an emergency--"
+
+Again she hesitated. And Justine, with the maddening gentleness of
+the person prepared to carry a point at all costs, answered again:
+
+"It's the rule. I'm sorry; but I am not supposed to."
+
+"I should suppose that you were in my house to make yourself useful
+to me," Mrs. Salisbury said coldly. She used a tone of quiet
+dignity; but she knew that she had had the worst of the encounter.
+She was really a little dazed by the firmness of the rebuff.
+
+"They make a point of our keeping to the letter of the law," Justine
+explained.
+
+"Not knowing what my particular needs are, nor how I like my house
+to be run, is that it?" the other woman asked shrewdly.
+
+"Well--" Justine hung upon an embarrassed assent. "But perhaps they
+won't be so firm about it as soon as the school is really
+established," she added eagerly.
+
+"No; I think they will not!" Mrs. Salisbury agreed with a short
+laugh, "inasmuch as they CANNOT, if they ever hope to get any
+foothold at all!"
+
+And she left the kitchen, feeling that in the last remark at least
+she had scored, yet very angry at Justine, who made this sort of
+warfare necessary.
+
+"If this sort of thing keeps up, I shall simply have to let her GO!"
+she said.
+
+But she was trembling, and she came to a full stop in the front
+hall. It was maddening; it was unbelievable; but that neglected half
+hour of work threatened to wreck her entire day. With every fiber of
+her being in revolt, she went into the sitting-room.
+
+This was Alexandra's responsibility, after all, she said to herself.
+And, after a moment's indecision, she decided to telephone her
+daughter at the Burning Woods Club.
+
+"Hello, Mother," said Alexandra, when a page had duly informed her
+that she was wanted at the telephone. Her voice sounded a little
+tired, faintly impatient. "What is it, Mother?"
+
+"Why, I ought to go to Mary Bell's tea, dearie, and I wanted just to
+look in at the Athenaeum--" Mrs. Salisbury began, a little
+inconsequently. "How soon do you expect to be home?" she broke off
+to ask.
+
+"I don't know," said Sandy lifelessly.
+
+"Are you coming back with Owen?"
+
+"No," Sandy said, in the same tone. "I'll come back with the
+Prichards, I guess, or with one of the girls. Owen and the Brice boy
+are taking Miss Satterlee for a little spin up around Feather Rock."
+
+"Miss WHO?" But Mrs. Salisbury knew very well who Miss Satterlee
+was. A pretty and pert and rowdyish little dancer, she had managed
+to captivate one or two of the prominent matrons of the club, and
+was much in evidence there, to the great discomfort of the more
+conservative Sandy and her intimates.
+
+Now Sandy's mother ended the conversation with a few very casual
+remarks, in not too sympathetic or indignant a vein. Then, with
+heart and mind in anything but a hospitable or joyous state, she set
+about the task of putting the sitting room in order. She abandoned
+once and for all any hope of getting to her club or her tea that
+afternoon, and was therefore possessed of three distinct causes of
+grievance.
+
+With her mother heart aching for the quiet misery betrayed by
+Sandy's voice, she could not blame the girl. Nor could she blame
+herself. So Justine got the full measure of her disapproval, and,
+while she worked, Mrs. Salisbury refreshed her soul with imaginary
+conversations in which she kindly but firmly informed Justine that
+her services were no longer needed--
+
+However, the dinner was perfect. Course smoothly followed course;
+there was no hesitating, no hitch; the service was swift, noiseless,
+unobtrusive. The head of the house was obviously delighted, and the
+guests enthusiastic.
+
+Best of all, Owen arrived early, irreproachably dressed, if a little
+uncomfortable in his evening clothes, and confided to Sandy that he
+had had a "rotten time" with Miss Satterlee.
+
+"But she's just the sort of little cat that catches a dear, great
+big idiot like Owen," said Sandy to her mother, when the older woman
+had come in to watch the younger slip into her gown for the
+evening's affair.
+
+"Look out, dear, or I will begin to suspect you of a tendresse in
+that direction!" the mother said archly.
+
+"For Owen?" Sandy raised surprised brows. "I'm mad about him, I'd
+marry him to-night!" she went on calmly.
+
+"If you really cared, dear, you couldn't use that tone," her mother
+said uncomfortably. "Love comes only once, REAL love, that is--"
+
+"Oh, Mother! There's no such thing as real love," Sandy said
+impatiently. "I know ten good, nice men I would marry, and I'll bet
+you did, too, years ago, only you weren't brought up to admit it!
+But I like Owen best, and it makes me sick to see a person like Rose
+Satterlee annexing him. She'll make him utterly wretched; she's that
+sort. Whereas I am really decent, don't you know; I'd be the sort of
+wife he'd go crazier and crazier about. He's one of those
+unfortunate men who really don't know what they want until they get
+something they don't want. They--"
+
+"Don't, dear. It distresses me to hear you talk this way," Mrs.
+Salisbury said, with dignity. "I don't know whether modern girls
+realize how dreadful they are," she went on, "but at least I needn't
+have my own daughter show such a lack of--of delicacy and of
+refinement." And in the dead silence that followed she cast about
+for some effective way of changing the subject, and finally decided
+to tell Sandy what she thought of Justine.
+
+But here, too, Sandy was unsympathetic. Scowling as she hooked the
+filmy pink and silver of her evening gown, Sandy took up Justine's
+defense.
+
+"All up to me, Mother, every bit of it! And, honestly now, you had
+no right to ask her to do--"
+
+"No right!" Exasperated beyond all words, Mrs. Salisbury picked up
+her fan, gathered her dragging skirts together, and made a dignified
+departure from the room. "No right!" she echoed, more in pity than
+anger. "Well, really, I wonder sometimes what we are coming to! No
+right to ask my servant, whom I pay thirty-seven and a half dollars
+a month, to stop writing letters long enough to clean my sitting
+room! Well, right or wrong, we'll see!"
+
+But the cryptic threat contained in the last words was never carried
+out. The dinner was perfect, and Owen was back in his old position
+as something between a brother and a lover, full of admiring great
+laughs for Sandy and boyish confidences. There was not a cloud on
+the evening for Mrs. Salisbury. And the question of Justine's
+conduct was laid on the shelf.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+After the dinner party domestic matters seemed to run even more
+smoothly than before, but there was a difference, far below the
+surface, in Mrs. Salisbury's attitude toward the new maid. The
+mistress found herself incessantly looking for flaws in Justine's
+perfectness; for things that Justine might easily have done, but
+would not do.
+
+In this Mrs. Salisbury was unconsciously aided and abetted by her
+sister, Mrs. Otis, a large, magnificent woman of forty-five, who had
+a masterful and assured manner, as became a very rich and
+influential widow. Mrs. Otis had domineered Mrs. Salisbury
+throughout their childhood; she had brought up a number of sons and
+daughters in a highly successful manner, and finally she kept a
+houseful of servants, whom she managed with a firm hand, and
+managed, it must be admitted, very well. She had seen the Treasure
+many times before, but it was while spending a day in November with
+her sister that she first expressed her disapproval of Justine.
+
+"You spoil her, Sarah," said Mrs. Otis. "She's a splendid cook, of
+course, and a nice-mannered girl. But you spoil her."
+
+"I? I have nothing to do with it," Mrs. Salisbury asserted promptly.
+"She does exactly what the college permits; no more and no less."
+
+"Nonsense!" Mrs. Otis said largely, genially. And she exchanged an
+amused look with Sandy.
+
+The three ladies were in the little library, after luncheon,
+enjoying a coal fire. The sisters, both with sewing, were in big
+armchairs. Sandy, idly turning the pages of a new magazine, sat at
+her mother's feet. The first heavy rain of the season battered at
+the windows.
+
+"Now, that darning, Sally," Mrs. Otis said, glancing at her sister's
+sewing. "Why don't you simply call the girl and ask her to do it?
+There's no earthly reason why she shouldn't be useful. She's got
+absolutely nothing to do. The girl would probably be happier with
+some work in her hands. Don't encourage her to think that she can
+whisk through her lunch dishes and then rush off somewhere. They
+have no conscience about it, my dear. You're the mistress, and you
+are supposed to arrange things exactly to suit yourself, no matter
+if nobody else has ever done things your way from the beginning of
+time!"
+
+"That's a lovely theory, Auntie," said Alexandra, "but this is an
+entirely different situation."
+
+For answer Mrs. Otis merely compressed her lips, and flung the pink
+yarn that she was knitting into a baby's sacque steadily over her
+flashing needles.
+
+"Where's Justine now?" she asked, after a moment.
+
+"In her room," Mrs. Salisbury answered.
+
+"No; she's gone for a walk, Mother," Sandy said. "She loves to walk
+in the rain, and she wanted to change her library book, and send a
+telegram or something--"
+
+"Just like a guest in the house!" Mrs. Otis observed, with fine
+scorn. "Surely she asked you if she might go, Sally?"
+
+"No. Her--her work is done. She--comes and goes that way."
+
+"Without saying a word? And who answers the door?" Mrs. Otis was
+unaffectedly astonished now.
+
+"She does if she's in the house, Mattie, just as she answers the
+telephone. But she's only actually on duty one afternoon a week."
+
+"You see, the theory is, Auntie," Sandy supplied, "that persons on
+our income--I won't say of our position, for Mother hates that--but
+on our income, aren't supposed to require formal door-answering very
+often."
+
+Mrs. Otis, her knitting suspended, moved her round eyes from mother
+to daughter and back again. She did not say a word, but words were
+not needed.
+
+"I know it seems outrageous, in some ways, Mattie," Mrs. Salisbury
+presently said, with a little nervous laugh. "But what is one to
+do?"
+
+"Do?" echoed her sister roundly. "DO? Well, I know I keep six house
+servants, and have always kept at least three, and I never heard the
+equal of THIS in all my days! Do?--I'd show you what I'd do fast
+enough! Do you suppose I'd pay a maid thirty-seven dollars a month
+to go tramping off to the library in the rain, and to tell me what
+my social status was? Why, Evelyn keeps two, and pays one eighteen
+and one fifteen, and do you suppose she'd allow either such
+liberties? Not at all. The downstairs girl wears a nice little cap
+and apron--'Madam, dinner is served,' she says--"
+
+"Yes, but Evelyn's had seven cooks since she was married," Sandy,
+who was not a great admirer of her young married cousin, put in
+here, "and Arthur said that she actually cried because she could not
+give a decent dinner!"
+
+"Evelyn's only a beginner, dear," said Evelyn's mother sharply, "but
+she has the right spirit. No nonsense, regular holidays, and hard
+work when they are working is the only way to impress maids. Mary
+Underwood," she went on, turning to her sister, "says that, when she
+and Fred are to be away for a meal, she deliberately lays out extra
+work for the maid; she says it keeps her from getting ideas. No,
+Sally," Mrs. Otis concluded, with the older-sister manner she had
+worn years ago, "no, dear; you are all wrong about this, and sooner
+or later this girl will simply walk over you, and you'll see it as I
+do. Changing her book at the library, indeed! How did she know that
+you mightn't want tea served this afternoon?"
+
+"She wouldn't serve it, if we did, Aunt Martha," Sandy said,
+dimpling. "She never serves tea! That's one of the regulations."
+
+"Well, we simply won't discuss it," Mrs. Otis said, firm lines
+forming themselves at the corners of her capable mouth. "If you like
+that sort of thing, you like it, that's all! I don't. We'll talk of
+something else."
+
+But she could not talk of anything else. Presently she burst out
+afresh.
+
+"Dear me, when I think of the way Ma used to manage 'em! No nonsense
+there; it was walk a chalk line in Ma's house! Your grandmother,"
+she said to Alexandra, with stern relish, "had had a pack of slaves
+about her in HER young days. But, of course, Sally," she added
+charitably, "you've been ill, and things do have to run themselves
+when one's ill--"
+
+"You don't get the idea, Auntie," Sandy said blithely. "Mother pays
+for efficiency. Justine isn't a mere extra pair of hands; she's a
+trained professional worker. She's just like a stenographer, except
+that what she does is ten times harder to learn than stenography. We
+can no more ask her to get tea than Dad could ask his head
+bookkeeper to--well, to drop in here some Sunday and O.K. Mother's
+household accounts. It's an age of specialization, Aunt Martha."
+
+"It's an age of utter nonsense," Mrs. Otis said forcibly. "But if
+your mother and father like to waste their money that way--"
+
+"There isn't much waste of money to it," Mrs. Salisbury put in
+neatly, "for Justine manages on less than I ever did. I think
+there's been only one week this fall when she hasn't had a balance."
+
+"A balance of what?"
+
+"A surplus, I mean. A margin left from her allowance."
+
+The pink wool fell heavily into Mrs. Otis's broad lap. "She handles
+your money for you, does she, Sally?"
+
+"Why, yes. She seems eminently fitted for it. And she does it for a
+third less, Mattie, truly. She more than saves the difference in her
+wages."
+
+"You let her buy things and pay tradesmen, do you ?"
+
+"Oh, Auntie, why not?" Alexandra asked, amused but impatient. "Why
+shouldn't Mother let her do that?"
+
+"Well, it's not my idea of good housekeeping, that's all," Mrs. Otis
+said staidly. "Managing is the most important part of housekeeping.
+In giving such a girl financial responsibilities, you not only let
+go of the control of your household, but you put temptation in her
+way. No; let the girl try making some beds, and serving tea, now and
+then; and do your own marketing and paying, Sally. It's the only
+way."
+
+"Justine tempted--why, she's not that sort of girl at all!"
+Alexandra laughed gaily.
+
+"Very well, my dear, perhaps she's not, and perhaps you young girls
+know everything that is to be known about life," her aunt answered
+witheringly. "But when grown business men were cheated as easily as
+those men in the First National were," she finished impressively,
+alluding to recent occurrences in River Falls, "it seems a little
+astonishing to find a girl your age so sure of her own judgment,
+that's all."
+
+Sandy's answer, if indirect, was effective.
+
+"How about some tea?" she asked. "Will you have some, either of you?
+It only takes me a minute to get it."
+
+"And I wish you could have seen Mattie's expression, Kane," Mrs.
+Salisbury said to her husband when telling him of the conversation
+that evening, "really, she glared! I suppose she really can't
+understand how, with an expensive servant in the house--" Mrs.
+Salisbury's voice dropped a little on a note of mild amusement. She
+sat idly at her dressing table, her hair loosened, her eyes
+thoughtful. When she spoke again, it was with a shade of resentment.
+"And, really, it is most inconvenient," she said. "I don't want to
+impose upon a girl; I never DID impose upon a girl; but I like to
+feel that I'm mistress in my own house. If the work is too hard one
+day, I will make it easier the next, and so on. But, as Mat says, it
+LOOKS so disobliging in a maid to have her race off; SHE doesn't
+care whether you get any tea or not; SHE'S enjoying herself! And
+after all one's kindness--And then another thing," she presently
+roused herself to add, "Mat thinks that it is very bad management on
+my part to let Justine handle money. She says--"
+
+"I devoutly wish that Mattie Otis would mind--" Mr. Salisbury did
+not finish his sentence. He wound his watch, laid it on his bureau,
+and went on, more mildly: "If you can do better than Justine, it may
+or may not be worth your while to take that out of her hands; but,
+if you can't, it seems to me sheer folly. My Lord, Sally--"
+
+"Yes, I know! I know," Mrs. Salisbury said hastily. "But, really,
+Kane," she went on slowly, the color coming into her face, "let us
+suppose that every family had a graduate cook, who marketed and
+managed. And let us suppose the children, like ours, out of the
+nursery. Then just what share of her own household responsibility IS
+a woman supposed to take?
+
+"You are eternally saying, not about me, but about other men's
+wives, that women to-day have too much leisure as it is. But, with a
+Justine, why, I could go off to clubs and card parties every day!
+I'd know that the house was clean, the meals as good and as
+nourishing as could be; I'd know that guests would be well cared for
+and that bills would be paid. Isn't a woman, the mistress of a
+house, supposed to do more than that? I don't want to be a mere
+figurehead."
+
+Frowning at her own reflection in the glass, deeply in earnest, she
+tried to puzzle it out.
+
+"In the old times, when women had big estates to look after," she
+presently pursued, "servants, horses, cows, vegetables and fruit
+gardens, soap-making and weaving and chickens and babies, they had
+real responsibilities, they had real interests. Housekeeping to-day
+isn't interesting. It's confining, and it's monotonous. But take it
+away, and what is a woman going to do?"
+
+"That," her husband answered seriously, "is the real problem of the
+day, I truly believe. That is what you women have to discover.
+Delegating your housekeeping, how are you going to use your
+energies, and find the work you want to do in the world? How are you
+going to manage the questions of being obliged to work at home, and
+to suit your hours to yourself, and to really express yourselves,
+and at the same time get done some of the work of the world that is
+waiting for women to do."
+
+His wife continued to eye him expectantly.
+
+"Well, how?" said she.
+
+"I don't know. I'm asking you!" he answered pointedly. Mrs.
+Salisbury sighed.
+
+"Dear me, I do get so tired of this talk of efficiency, and women's
+work in the world!" she said. "I wish one might feel it was enough
+to live along quietly, busy with dressmaking, or perhaps now and
+then making a fancy dessert for guests, giving little teas and card
+parties, and making calls. It--" a yearning admiration rang in her
+voice, "it seems such a dignified, pleasant ideal to live up to!"
+she said.
+
+"Well, it looks as if we had seen the last of that particular type
+of woman," her husband said cheerfully. "Or at least it looks as if
+that woman would find her own level, deliberately separate herself
+from her more ambitious sisters, who want to develop higher arts
+than that of mere housekeeping."
+
+"And how do YOU happen to know so much about it, Kane ?"
+
+"I? Oh, it's in the air, I guess," the man admitted. "The whole idea
+is changing. A man used to be ashamed of the idea of his wife
+working. Now men tell you with pride that their wives paint or write
+or bind books--Bates' wife makes loads of money designing toys, and
+Mrs. Brewster is consulting physician on a hospital staff. Mary
+Shotwell--she was a trained nurse--what was it she did?"
+
+"She gave a series of talks on hygiene for rich people's children,"
+his wife supplied. "And of course Florence Yeats makes candy, and
+the Gerrish girls have opened a tea room in the old garage. But it
+seems funny, just the same! It seems funny to me that so many women
+find it worth while to hire servants, so that they can rush off to
+make the money to pay the servants! It would seem so much more
+normal to stay at home and do the housework themselves, and it would
+LOOK better."
+
+"Well, certain women always will, I suppose. And others will find
+their outlets in other ways, and begin to look about for Justines,
+who will lift the household load. I believe we'll see the time,
+Sally," said Kane Salisbury thoughtfully, "when a young couple,
+launching into matrimony, will discuss expenses with a mutual
+interest; you pay this and I'll pay that, as it were. A trained
+woman will step into their kitchen, and Madame will walk off to
+business with her husband, as a matter of course."
+
+"Heaven forbid!" Mrs. Salisbury said piously. "If there is anything
+romantic or tender or beautiful about married life under those
+circumstances, I fail to see it, that's all!"
+
+It happened, a week or two later, on a sharp, sunshiny morning in
+early winter, that Mrs. Salisbury and Alexandra found themselves
+sauntering through the nicest shopping district of River Falls.
+There were various small things to be bought for the wardrobes of
+mother and daughter, prizes for a card party, birthday presents for
+one of the boys, and a number of other little things.
+
+They happened to pass the windows of Lewis & Sons' big grocery, one
+of the finest shops in town, on their way from one store to another,
+and, attracted by a window full of English preserves, Mrs. Salisbury
+decided to go in and leave an order.
+
+"I hope that you are going to bring your account back to us, Mrs.
+Salisbury," said the alert salesman who waited upon them. "We are
+always sorry to let an old customer go."
+
+"But I have an account here," said Mrs. Salisbury, startled.
+
+The salesman, smiling, shook his head, and one of the members of the
+firm, coming up, confirmed the denial.
+
+"We were very sorry to take your name off our books, Mrs.
+Salisbury," said he, with pleasant dignity; "I can remember your
+coming into the old store on River Street when this young lady here
+was only a small girl."
+
+His hand indicated a spot about three feet from the floor, as the
+height of the child Alexandra, and the grown Alexandra dimpled an
+appreciation of his memory.
+
+"But I don't understand," Mrs. Salisbury said, wrinkling her
+forehead; "I had no idea that the account was closed, Mr. Lewis. How
+long ago was this?"
+
+"It was while you were ill," said Mr. Lewis soothingly. "You might
+look up the exact date, Mr. Laird."
+
+"But why?" Mrs. Salisbury asked, prettily puzzled.
+
+"That I don't know," answered Mr. Lewis. "And at the time, of
+course, we did not press it. There was no complaint, of that I'm
+very sure."
+
+"But I don't understand," Mrs. Salisbury persisted. "I don't see who
+could have done it except Mr. Salisbury, and, if he had had any
+reason, he would have told me of it. However," she rose to go, "if
+you'll send the jams, and the curry, and the chocolate, Mr. Laird,
+I'll look into the matter at once."
+
+"And you're quite yourself again?" Mr. Lewis asked solicitously,
+accompanying them to the door. "That's the main thing, isn't it?
+There's been so much sickness everywhere lately. And your young lady
+looks as if she didn't know the meaning of the word. Wonderful
+morning, isn't it? Good morning, Mrs. Salisbury!"
+
+"Good morning!" Mrs. Salisbury responded graciously. But, as soon as
+she and Alexandra were out of hearing, her face darkened. "That
+makes me WILD!" said she.
+
+"What does, darling?"
+
+"That! Justine having the audacity to change my trade!"
+
+"But why should she want to, Mother?"
+
+"I really don't know. Given it to friends of hers perhaps."
+
+"Oh, Mother, she wouldn't!"
+
+"Well, we'll see." Mrs. Salisbury dropped the subject, and brought
+her mind back with a visible effort to the morning's work.
+
+Immediately after lunch she interrogated Justine. The girl was
+drying glasses, each one emerging like a bubble of hot and shining
+crystal from her checked glass towel.
+
+"Justine," began the mistress, "have we been getting our groceries
+from Lewis & Sons lately?"
+
+Justine placidly referred to an account book which she took from a
+drawer under the pantry shelves.
+
+"Our last order was August eleventh," she announced.
+
+Something in her unembarrassed serenity annoyed Mrs. Salisbury.
+
+"May I ask why?" she suggested sharply.
+
+"Well, they are a long way from here," Justine said, after a
+second's thought, "and they are very expensive grocers, Mrs.
+Salisbury. Of course, what they have is of the best, but they cater
+to the very richest families, you know--firms like Lewis & Sons
+aren't very much interested in the orders they receive from--well,
+from upper middle-class homes, people of moderate means. They handle
+hotels and the summer colony at Burning Woods."
+
+Justine paused, a little uncertain of her terms, and Mrs. Salisbury
+interposed an icy question.
+
+"May I ask where you HAVE transferred my trade?"
+
+"Not to any one place," the girl answered readily and mildly. But a
+little resentful color had crept into her cheeks. "I pay as I go,
+and follow the bargains," she explained. "I go to market twice a
+week, and send enough home to make it worth while for the tradesman.
+You couldn't market as I do, Mrs. Salisbury, but the tradespeople
+rather expect it of a maid. Sometimes I gather an assortment of
+vegetables into my basket, and get them to make a price on the
+whole. Or, if there is a sale at any store, I go there, and order a
+dozen cans, or twenty pounds of whatever they are selling."
+
+Mrs. Salisbury was not enjoying this revelation. The obnoxious term
+"upper middle class" was biting like an acid upon her pride. And it
+was further humiliating to contemplate her maid as a driver of
+bargains, as dickering for baskets of vegetables.
+
+"The best is always the cheapest in the long run, whatever it may
+cost, Justine," she said, with dignity. "We may not be among the
+richest families in town," she was unable to refrain from adding,
+"but it is rather amusing to hear you speak of the family as upper
+middle class!"
+
+"I only meant the--the sort of ordering we did," Justine hastily
+interposed. "I meant from the grocer's point of view."
+
+"Well, Mr. Lewis sold groceries to my grandmother before I was
+married," Mrs. Salisbury said loftily, "and I prefer him to any
+other grocer. If he is too far away, the order may be telephoned. Or
+give me your list, and I will stop in, as I used to do. Then I can
+order any little extra delicacy that I see, something I might not
+otherwise think of. Let me know what you need to-morrow morning, and
+I'll see to it."
+
+To her surprise, Justine did not bow an instant assent. Instead the
+girl looked a little troubled.
+
+"Shall I give you my accounts and my ledger?" she asked rather
+uncertainly.
+
+"No-o, I don't see any necessity for that," the older woman said,
+after a second's pause.
+
+"But Lewis & Sons is a very expensive place," Justine pursued; "they
+never have sales, never special prices. Their cheapest tomatoes are
+fifteen cents a can, and their peaches twenty-five--"
+
+"Never mind," Mrs. Salisbury interrupted her briskly. "We'll manage
+somehow. I always did trade there, and never had any trouble. Begin
+with him to-morrow. And, while, of course, I understand that I was
+ill and couldn't be bothered in this case, I want to ask you not to
+make any more changes without consulting me, if you please."
+
+Justine, still standing, her troubled eyes on her employer, the last
+glass, polished to diamond brightness, in her hand, frowned
+mutinously.
+
+"You understand that if you do any ordering whatever, Mrs.
+Salisbury, I will have to give up my budget. You see, in that case,
+I wouldn't know where I stood at all."
+
+"You would get the bill at the end of the month," Mrs. Salisbury
+said, displeased.
+
+"Yes, but I don't run bills," the girl persisted.
+
+"I don't care to discuss it, Justine," the mistress said pleasantly;
+"just do as I ask you, if you please, and we'll settle everything at
+the end of the month. You shall not be held responsible, I assure
+you."
+
+She went out of the kitchen, and the next morning had a pleasant
+half hour in the big grocery, and left a large order.
+
+"Just a little kitchen misunderstanding," she told the affable Mr.
+Lewis, "but when one is ill--However, I am rapidly getting the reins
+back into my own hands now."
+
+After that, Mrs. Salisbury ordered in person, or by telephone, every
+day, and Justine's responsibilities were confined to the meat market
+and greengrocer. Everything went along very smoothly until the end
+of the month, when Justine submitted her usual weekly account and a
+bill from Lewis & Sons which was some three times larger in amount
+than was the margin of money supposed to pay it.
+
+This was annoying. Mrs. Salisbury could not very well rebuke her,
+nor could she pay the bill out of her own purse. She determined
+to put it aside until her husband seemed in a mood for financial
+advances, and, wrapping it firmly about the inadequate notes and
+silver given her by Justine, she shut it in a desk drawer. There the
+bill remained, although the money was taken out for one thing or
+another; change that must be made, a small bill that must be paid at
+the door.
+
+Another fortnight went by, and Lewis & Sons submitted another
+bimonthly bill. Justine also gave her mistress another inadequate
+sum, what was left from her week's expenditures.
+
+The two grocery bills were for rather a formidable sum. The thought
+of them, in their desk drawer, rather worried Mrs. Salisbury. One
+evening she bravely told her husband about them, and laid them
+before him.
+
+Mr. Salisbury was annoyed. He had been free from these petty worries
+for some months, and he disliked their introduction again.
+
+"I thought this was Justine's business, Sally?" said he, frowning
+over his eyeglasses.
+
+"Well, it IS" said his wife, "but she hasn't enough money,
+apparently, and she simply handed me these, without saying
+anything."
+
+"Well, but that doesn't sound like her. Why?"
+
+"Oh, because I do the ordering, she says. They're queer, you know,
+Kane; all servants are. And she seems very touchy about it."
+
+"Nonsense!" said the head of the house roundly. "Oh, Justine!" he
+shouted, and the maid, after putting an inquiring head in from the
+dining-room, duly came in, and stood before him.
+
+"What's struck your budget that you were so proud of, Justine?"
+asked Kane Salisbury. "It looks pretty sick."
+
+"I am not keeping on a budget now," answered Justine, with a rather
+surprised glance at her mistress.
+
+"Not; but why not?" asked the man good-naturedly. And his wife added
+briskly, "Why did you stop, Justine?"
+
+"Because Mrs. Salisbury has been ordering all this month," Justine
+said. "And that, of course, makes it impossible for me to keep track
+of what is spent. These last four weeks I have only been keeping an
+account; I haven't attempted to keep within any limit."
+
+"Ah, you see that's it," Kane Salisbury said triumphantly. "Of
+course that's it! Well, Mrs. Salisbury will have to let you go back
+to the ordering then. D'ye see, Sally? Naturally, Justine can't do a
+thing while you're buying at random--"
+
+"My dear, we have dealt with Lewis & Sons ever since we were
+married," Mrs. Salisbury said, smiling with great tolerance, and in
+a soothing voice, "Justine, for some reason, doesn't like Lewis &
+Sons--"
+
+"It isn't that," said the maid quickly. "It's just that it's against
+the rules of the college for anyone else to do any ordering, unless,
+of course, you and I discussed it beforehand and decided just what
+to spend."
+
+"You mean, unless I simply went to market for you?" asked the
+mistress, in a level tone.
+
+"Well, it amounts to that--yes."
+
+Mrs. Salisbury threw her husband one glance.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you what we have decided in the morning, Justine,"
+she said, with dignity. "That's all. You needn't wait."
+
+Justine went back to her kitchen, and Mr. Salisbury, smiling, said:
+
+"Sally, how unreasonable you are! And how you do dislike that girl!"
+
+The outrageous injustice of this scattered to the winds Mrs.
+Salisbury's last vestige of calm, and, after one scathing summary of
+the case, she refused to discuss it at all, and opened the evening
+paper with marked deliberation.
+
+For the next two or three weeks she did all the marketing herself,
+but this plan did not work well. Bills doubled in size, and so many
+things were forgotten, or were ordered at the last instant by
+telephone, and arrived too late, that the whole domestic system was
+demoralized.
+
+Presently, of her own accord, Mrs. Salisbury reestablished Justine
+with her allowance, and with full authority to shop when and how she
+pleased, and peace fell again. But, smoldering in Mrs. Salisbury's
+bosom was a deep resentment at this peculiar and annoying state of
+affairs. She began to resent everything Justine did and said, as one
+human being shut up in the same house with another is very apt to
+do.
+
+No schooling ever made it easy to accept the sight of Justine's
+leisure when she herself was busy. It was always exasperating, when
+perhaps making beds upstairs, to glance from the window and see
+Justine starting for market, her handsome figure well displayed in
+her long dark coat, her shining braids half hidden by her simple yet
+dashing hat.
+
+"I walked home past Perry's," Justine would perhaps say on her
+return, "to see their prize chrysanthemums. They really are
+wonderful! The old man took me over the greenhouses himself, and
+showed me everything!"
+
+Or perhaps, unpacking her market basket by the spotless kitchen
+table, she would confide innocently:
+
+"Samuels is really having an extraordinary sale of serges this
+morning. I went in, and got two dress lengths for my sister's
+children. If I can find a good dressmaker, I really believe I'll
+have one myself. I think"--Justine would eye her vegetables
+thoughtfully--"I think I'll go up now and have my bath, and cook
+these later."
+
+Mrs. Salisbury could reasonably find no fault with this. But an
+indescribable irritation possessed her whenever such a conversation
+took place. The coolness!--she would say to herself, as she went
+upstairs--wandering about to shops and greenhouses, and quietly
+deciding to take a bath before luncheon! Why, Mrs. Salisbury had had
+maids who never once asked for the use of the bathroom, although
+they had been for months in her employ.
+
+No, she could not attack Justine on this score. But she began to
+entertain the girl with enthusiastic accounts of the domestics of
+earlier and better days.
+
+"My mother had a girl," she said, "a girl named Norah O'Connor. I
+remember her very well. She swept, she cleaned, she did the entire
+washing for a family of eight, and she did all the cooking. And such
+cookies, and pies, and gingerbread as she made! All for sixteen
+dollars a month. We regarded Norah as a member of the family, and,
+even on her holidays she would take three or four of us, and walk
+with us to my father's grave; that was all she wanted to do. You
+don't see her like in these days, dear old Norah!"
+
+Justine listened respectfully, silently. Once, when her mistress was
+enlarging upon the advantages of slavery, the girl commented mildly:
+
+"Doesn't it seem a pity that the women of the United States didn't
+attempt at least to train all those Southern colored people for
+house servants? It seems to be their natural element. They love to
+live in white families, and they have no caste pride. It would seem
+to be such a waste of good material, letting them worry along
+without much guidance all these years. It almost seems as if the
+Union owed it to them."
+
+"Dear me, I wish somebody would! I, for one, would love to have dear
+old mammies around me again," Mrs. Salisbury said, with fervor.
+"They know their place," she added neatly.
+
+"The men could be butlers and gardeners and coachmen," pursued
+Justine.
+
+"Yes, and with a lot of finely trained colored women in the market,
+where would you girls from the college be?" the other woman asked,
+not without a spice of mischievous enjoyment.
+
+"We would be a finer type of servant, for more fastidious people,"
+Justine scored by answering soberly. "You could hardly expect a
+colored girl to take the responsibility of much actual managing, I
+should suppose. There would always be a certain proportion of people
+who would prefer white servants."
+
+"Perhaps there are," Mrs. Salisbury admitted dubiously. She felt,
+with a sense of triumph, that she had given Justine a pretty strong
+hint against "uppishness." But Justine was innocently impervious to
+hints. As a matter of fact, she was not an exceptionally bright
+girl; literal, simple, and from very plain stock, she was merely
+well trained in her chosen profession. Sometimes she told her
+mistress of her fellow-graduates, taking it for granted that Mrs.
+Salisbury entirely approved of all the ways of the American School
+of Domestic Science.
+
+"There's Mabel Frost," said Justine one day. "She would have
+graduated when I did, but she took the fourth year's work. She
+really is of a very fine family; her father is a doctor. And she has
+a position with a doctor's family now, right near here, in New Troy.
+There are just two in family, and both are doctors, and away all
+day. So Mabel has a splendid chance to keep up her music."
+
+"Music?" Mrs. Salisbury asked sharply.
+
+"Piano. She's had lessons all her life. She plays very well, too."
+
+"Yes; and some day the doctor or his wife will come in and find her
+at the piano, and your friend will lose her fine position," Mrs.
+Salisbury suggested.
+
+"Oh, Mabel never would have touched the piano without their
+permission," Justine said quickly, with a little resentful flush.
+
+"You mean that they are perfectly willing to have her use it?" Mrs.
+Salisbury asked.
+
+"Oh, quite!"
+
+"Have they ADOPTED her?"
+
+"Oh, no! No; Mabel is twenty-four or five."
+
+"What's the doctor's name?"
+
+"Mitchell. Dr. Quentin Mitchell. He's a member of the Burning Woods
+Club."
+
+"A member of the CLUB! And he allows--" Mrs. Salisbury did not
+finish her thought. "I don't want to say anything against your
+friend," she began again presently, "but for a girl in her position
+to waste her time studying music seems rather absurd to me. I
+thought the very idea of the college was to content girls with
+household positions."
+
+"Well, she is going to be married next spring," Justine said, "and
+her husband is quite musical. He plays a church organ. I am going to
+dinner with them on Thursday, and then to the Gadski concert.
+They're both quite music mad."
+
+"Well, I hope he can afford to buy tickets for Gadski, but marriage
+is a pretty expensive business," Mrs. Salisbury said pleasantly,
+"What is he, a chauffeur--a salesman?" To do her justice, she knew
+the question would not offend, for Justine, like any girl from a
+small town, was not fastidious as to the position of her friends;
+was very fond of the policeman on the corner and his pretty wife,
+and liked a chat with Mrs. Sargent's chauffeur when occasion arose.
+
+But the girl's answer, in this case, was a masterly thrust.
+
+"No; he's something in a bank, Mrs. Salisbury. He's paying teller in
+that little bank at Burton Corners, beyond Burning Woods. But, of
+course, he hopes for promotion; they all do. I believe he is trying
+to get into the River Falls Mutual Savings, but I'm not sure."
+
+Mrs. Salisbury felt the blood in her face. Kane Salisbury had been
+in a bank when she married him; was cashier of the River Falls
+Mutual Savings Bank now.
+
+She carried away the asters she had been arranging, without further
+remark. But Justine's attitude rankled. Mrs. Salisbury, absurd as
+she felt her own position to be, could not ignore the impertinence
+of her maid's point of view. Theoretically, what Justine thought
+mattered less than nothing. Actually it really made a great
+difference to the mistress of the house.
+
+"I would like to put that girl in her place once!" thought Mrs.
+Salisbury. She began to wish that Justine would marry, and to envy
+those of her friends who were still struggling with untrained
+Maggies and Almas and Chloes. Whatever their faults, these girls
+were still SERVANTS, old-fashioned "help"--they drudged away at
+cooking and beds and sweeping all day, and rattled dishes far into
+the night.
+
+The possibility of getting a second little maid occurred to her. She
+suggested it, tentatively, to Sandy.
+
+"You couldn't, unless I'm mistaken, Mother," Sandy said briskly,
+eyeing a sandwich before she bit into it. The ladies were at
+luncheon. "For a graduate servant can't work with any but a graduate
+servant; that's the rule. At least I THINK it is!" And Sandy,
+turning toward the pantry, called: "Oh, Justine!"
+
+"Justine," she asked, when the maid appeared, "isn't it true that
+you graduates can't work with untrained girls in the house?"
+
+"That's the rule," Justine assented.
+
+"And what does the school expect you to pay a second girl?" pursued
+the daughter of the house.
+
+"Well, where there are no children, twenty dollars a month," said
+Justine, "with one dollar each for every person more than two in the
+family. Then, in that case, the head servant, as we call the cook,
+would get five dollars less a month. That is, I would get thirty-two
+dollars, and the assistant twenty-three."
+
+"Gracious!" said Mrs. Salisbury. "Thank you, Justine. We were just
+asking. Fifty-five dollars for the two!" she ejaculated under her
+breath when the girl was gone. "Why, I could get a fine cook and
+waitress for less than that!"
+
+And instantly the idea of two good maids instead of one graduated
+one possessed her. A fine cook in the kitchen, paid, say twenty-
+five, and a "second girl," paid sixteen. And none of these
+ridiculous and inflexible regulations! Ah, the satisfaction of
+healthily imposing upon a maid again, of rewarding that maid with
+the gift of a half-worn gown, as a peace offering--Mrs. Salisbury
+drew a long breath. The time had come for a change.
+
+Mr. Salisbury, however, routed the idea with scorn. His wife had no
+argument hardy enough to survive the blighting breath of his
+astonishment. And Alexandra, casually approached, proved likewise
+unfavorable.
+
+"I am certainly not furthering my own comfort alone in this, as you
+and Daddy seem inclined to think," Mrs. Salisbury said severely to
+her daughter. "I feel that Justine's system is an imposition upon
+you, dear. It isn't right for a pretty girl of your age to be caught
+dusting the sitting-room, as Owen caught you yesterday. Daddy and I
+can keep a nice home, we keep a motor car, we put the boys in good
+schools, and it doesn't seem fair--"
+
+"Oh, fair your grandmother!" Sandy broke in, with a breezy laugh.
+"If Owen Sargent doesn't like it, he can just come TO! Look at HIS
+mother, eating dinner the other day with four representatives of the
+Waitresses' Union! Marching in a parade with dear knows who!
+Besides--"
+
+"It is very different in Mrs. Sargent's case, dear," said Mrs.
+Salisbury simply. "She could afford to do anything, and consequently
+it doesn't matter what she does! It doesn't matter what you do, if
+you can afford not to. The point is that we can't really afford a
+second maid."
+
+"I don't see what that has to do with it!" said the girl of the
+coming generation cheerfully.
+
+"It has EVERYTHING to do with it," the woman of the passing
+generation answered seriously.
+
+"As far as Owen goes," Sandy went on thoughtfully, "I'm only too
+much afraid he's the other way. What do you suppose he's going to do
+now? He's going to establish a little Neighborhood House for boys
+down on River Street, 'The Cyrus Sargent Memorial.' And, if you
+please, he's going to LIVE there! It's a ducky house; he showed me
+the blue-prints, with the darlingest apartment for himself you ever
+saw, and a plunge, and a roof gymnasium. It's going to cost,
+endowment and all, three hundred thousand dollars--"
+
+"Good heavens!" Mrs. Salisbury said, as one stricken.
+
+"And the worst of it is," Alexandra pursued, with a sympathetic
+laugh for her mother's concern, "that he'll meet some Madonna-eyed
+little factory girl or laundry worker down there and feel that he
+owes it to her to--"
+
+"To break your heart, Sandy," the mother supplied, all tender
+solicitude.
+
+"It's not so much a question of my heart," Sandy answered
+composedly, "as it is a question of his entire life. It's so
+unnecessary and senseless!"
+
+"And you can sit there calmly discussing it!" Mrs. Salisbury said,
+thoroughly out of temper with the entire scheme of things mundane.
+"Upon my word, I never saw or heard anything like it!" she observed.
+"I wonder that you don't quietly tell Owen that you care for him--
+but it's too dreadful to joke about! I give you up!"
+
+And she rose from her chair, and went quickly out of the room, every
+line in her erect little figure expressing exasperation and
+inflexibility. Sandy, smiling sleepily, reopened an interrupted
+novel. But she stared over the open page into space for a few
+moments, and finally spoke:
+
+"Upon my word, I don't know that that's at all a bad idea!" an
+interrupted novel. But she stared over the open page into space for
+a few moments, and finally spoke:
+
+"Upon my word, I don't know that that's at all a bad idea!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Mrs. Salisbury," said Justine, when her mistress came into the
+kitchen one December morning, "I've had a note from Mrs. Sargent--"
+
+"From Mrs. Sargent?" Mrs. Salisbury repeated, astonished. And to
+herself she said: "She's trying to get Justine away from me!"
+
+"She writes as Chairman of the Department of Civics of the Forum
+Club," pursued Justine, referring to the letter she held in her
+hand, "to ask me if I will address the club some Thursday on the
+subject of the College of Domestic Science. I know that you expect
+to give a card party some Thursday, and I thought I would make sure
+just which one you meant."
+
+Mrs. Salisbury, taken entirely unaware, was actually speechless for
+a moment. The Forum was, of all her clubs, the one in which
+membership was most prized by the women of River Falls. It was not a
+large club, and she had longed for many years somehow to place her
+name among the eighty on its roll. The richest and most exclusive
+women of River Falls belonged to the Forum Club; its few rooms,
+situated in the business part of town, and handsomely but plainly
+furnished, were full of subtle reminders that here was no mere
+social center; here responsible members of the recently enfranchised
+sex met to discuss civic betterment, schools and municipal budgets,
+commercialized vice and child labor, library appropriations, liquor
+laws and sewer systems. Local politicians were beginning to respect
+the Forum, local newspapers reported its conventions, printed its
+communications.
+
+Mrs. Salisbury was really a little bit out of place among the
+clever, serious young doctors, the architects, lawyers,
+philanthropists and writers who belonged to the club. But her
+membership therein was one of the things in which she felt an
+unalloyed satisfaction. If the discussions ever secretly bored or
+puzzled her, she was quite clever enough to conceal it. She sat, her
+handsome face, under its handsome hat, turned toward the speaker,
+her bright eyes immovable as she listened to reports and
+expositions. And, after the motion to adjourn had been duly made,
+she had her reward. Rich women, brilliant women, famous women
+chatted with her cordially as the Forum Club streamed downstairs.
+She was asked to luncheons, to teas; she was whirled home in the
+limousines of her fellow-members. No other one thing in her life
+seemed to Mrs. Salisbury as definite a social triumph as was her
+membership in the Forum.
+
+Her election had come about simply enough, after years of secret
+longing to become a member. Sandy, who was about twelve at the time,
+during a call from Mrs. Sargent, had said innocently:
+
+"Why haven't you ever joined the Forum, Mother?"
+
+"Why, yes; why not?" Mrs. Sargent had added.
+
+This gave Mrs. Salisbury an opportunity to say:
+
+"Well, I have been a very busy woman, and couldn't have done so,
+with these three dear children to watch. But, as a matter of fact,
+Mrs. Sargent, I have never been asked. At least," she went on
+scrupulously, "I am almost sure I never have been!" The implication
+being that the Forum's card of invitation might have been overlooked
+for more important affairs.
+
+"I'll send you another," the great lady had said at once. "You're
+just the sort we need," Mrs. Sargent had continued. "We've got
+enough widows and single women in now; what we want are the real
+mothers, who need shaking out of the groove!"
+
+Mrs. Sargent happened to be President of the Club at that time, so
+Mrs. Salisbury had only to ignore graciously the rather offensive
+phrasing of the invitation, and to await the news of her election,
+which duly and promptly arrived.
+
+And now Justine had been asked to speak at the Forum! It was the
+most distasteful bit of information that had come Mrs. Salisbury's
+way in a long, long time! She felt in her heart a stinging
+resentment against Mrs. Sargent, with her mad notions of equality,
+and against Justine, who was so complacently and contentedly
+accepting this monstrous state of affairs.
+
+"That is very kind of Mrs. Sargent," said she, fighting for dignity;
+"she is very much interested in working girls and their problems,
+and I suppose she thinks this might be a good advertisement for the
+school, too." This idea had just come to Mrs. Salisbury, and she
+found it vaguely soothing. "But I don't like the idea," she ended
+firmly; "it--it seems very odd, very--very conspicuous. I should
+prefer you not to consider anything of the kind."
+
+"I should prefer" was said in the tone that means "I command," yet
+Justine was not satisfied.
+
+"Oh, but why?" she asked.
+
+"If you force me to discuss it," said Mrs. Salisbury, in sudden
+anger, "because you are my maid! My gracious, YOU ARE MY MAID," she
+repeated, pent-up irritation finding an outlet at last. "There is
+such a relationship as mistress and maid, after all! While you are
+in my house you will do as I say. It is the mistress's place to give
+orders, not to take them, not to have to argue and defend herself--"
+
+"Certainly, if it is a question about the work the maid is supposed
+to do," Justine defended herself, with more spirit than the other
+woman had seen her show before. "But what she does with her leisure-
+-why it's just the same as what a clerk does with his leisure,
+nobody questions it, nobody--"
+
+"I tell you that I will not stand here and argue with you," said
+Mrs. Salisbury, with more dignity in her tone than in her words. "I
+say that I don't care to have my maid exploited by a lot of
+fashionable women at a club, and that ends it! And I must add," she
+went on, "that I am extremely surprised that Mrs. Sargent should
+approach you in such a matter, without consulting me!"
+
+"The relationship of mistress and maid," Justine said slowly, "is
+what has always made the trouble. Men have decided what they want
+done in their offices, and never have any trouble in finding boys to
+fill the vacancies. But women expect--"
+
+"I really don't care to listen to any further theories from that
+extraordinary school," said Mrs. Salisbury decidedly. "I have told
+you what I expect you to do, and I know you are too sensible a girl
+to throw away a good position--"
+
+"Mrs. Salisbury, if I intended to say anything in such a little talk
+that would reflect on this family, or even to mention it, it would
+be different, but, as it is--"
+
+"I should hope you WOULDN'T mention this family!" Mrs. Salisbury
+said hotly. "But even without that--"
+
+"It would be merely an outline of what the school is, and what it
+tries to do," Justine interposed. "Miss Holley, our founder and
+President, was most anxious to have us interest the general
+public in this way, if ever we got a chance."
+
+"What Miss Holley--whoever she is--wanted, or wants, is nothing to
+me!" Mrs. Salisbury said magnificently. "You know what I feel about
+this matter, and I have nothing more to say."
+
+She left the kitchen on the very end of the last word, and Justine,
+perforce not answering, hoped that the affair was concluded, once
+and for all.
+
+"For Mrs. Sargent may think she can exasperate me by patronizing my
+maid," said Mrs. Salisbury guardedly, when telling her husband and
+daughter of the affair that evening, "but there is a limit to
+everything, and I have had about enough of this efficiency
+business!"
+
+"I can only beg, Mother dear, that you won't have a row with Owen's
+dear little vacillating, weak-minded ma," said Sandy cheerfully.
+
+"No; but, seriously, don't you both think it's outrageous?" Mrs.
+Salisbury asked, looking from one to the other.
+
+"No-o; I see the girl's point," Kane Salisbury said thoughtfully.
+"What she does with her afternoons off is her own affair, after all;
+and you can't blame her, if a chance to step out of the groove comes
+along, for taking advantage of it. Strictly, you have no call to
+interfere."
+
+"Legally, perhaps I haven't," his wife conceded calmly. "But, thank
+goodness, my home is not yet a court of law. Besides, Daddy, if one
+of the young men in the bank did something of which you disapproved,
+you would feel privileged to interfere."
+
+"If he did something WRONG, Sally, not otherwise."
+
+"And you would be perfectly satisfied to meet your janitor somewhere
+at dinner?"
+
+"No; the janitor's colored, to begin with, and, more than that, he
+isn't the type one meets. But, if he qualified otherwise, I wouldn't
+mind meeting him just because he happened to be the janitor. Now,
+young Forrest turns up at the club for golf, and Sandy and I
+picked Fred Hall up the other day, coming back from the river." Kane
+Salisbury, leaning back in his chair, watched the rings of smoke
+that rose from his cigar. "It's a funny thing about you women," he
+said lazily. "You keep wondering why smart girls won't go into
+housework, and yet, if you get a girl who isn't a mere stupid
+machine, you resent every sign she gives of being an intelligent
+human being. No two of you keep house alike, and you jump on the
+girl the instant she hangs a dish towel up the way you don't. It's
+you women who make life so hard for each other. Now, if any decent
+man saw a young fellow at the bottom of the ladder, who was as good
+and clever and industrious as Justine is, he'd be glad to give him a
+hand up. But no; that means she's above her work, and has to be
+snubbed."
+
+"Don't talk so cynically, Daddy dear," Mrs. Salisbury said, smiling
+over her fancy work, as one only half listening.
+
+"I tell you, a change is coming in all these things, Sally," said
+the cynic, unruffled.
+
+"You bet there is!" his daughter seconded him from the favorite low
+seat that permitted her to rest her mouse-colored head against his
+knee.
+
+"Your mother's a conservative, Sandy," pursued the man of the house,
+encouraged, "but there's going to be some domestic revolutionizing
+in the next few years. It's hard enough to get a maid now; pretty
+soon it'll be impossible. Then you women will have to sit down and
+work the thing out, and ask yourselves why young American girls
+won't come into your homes, and eat the best food in the land, and
+get well paid for what they do. You'll have to reduce the work of an
+American home to a system, that's all, and what you want done that
+isn't provided for in that system you'll have to do yourselves.
+There's something in the way you treat a girl now, or in what you
+expect her to do, that's all wrong!"
+
+"It isn't a question of too much work," Mrs. Salisbury said. "They
+are much better off when they're worked hard. And I notice that your
+bookkeepers are kept pretty busy, Kane," she added neatly.
+
+"For an eight-hour day, Sally. But you expect a twelve or fourteen-
+hour day from your housemaid--"
+
+"If I pay a maid thirty-seven and a half dollars a month," his wife
+averred, with precision, "I expect her to do something for that
+thirty-seven dollars and a half!"
+
+"Well, but, Mother, she does!" Alexandra contributed eagerly. "In
+Justine's case she does an awful lot! She plans, and saves, and
+thinks about things. Sometimes she sits writing menus and crossing
+things out for an hour at a time."
+
+"And then Justine's a pioneer; in a way she's an experiment," the
+man said. "Experiments are always expensive. That's why the club is
+interested, I suppose. But in a few years probably the woods will be
+full of graduate servants--everyone'll have one! They'll have their
+clubs and their plans together, and that will solve some of the
+social side of the old trouble. They--"
+
+"Still, I notice that Mrs. Sargent herself doesn't employ graduate
+servants!" Mrs. Salisbury, who had been following a wandering line
+of thought, threw in darkly.
+
+"Because they haven't any graduates for homes like hers, Mother,"
+Alexandra supplied. "She keeps eight or nine housemaids. The college
+is only to supply the average home, don't you see? Where only one or
+two are kept--that's their idea."
+
+"And do they suppose that the average American woman is willing to
+go right on paying thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents for a maid?"
+Mrs. Salisbury asked mildly.
+
+"For five in family, Mother! Justine would only be thirty if three
+dear little strangers hadn't come to brighten your home," Sandy
+reminded her. "Besides," she went on, "Justine was telling me only a
+day or two ago of their latest scheme--they are arranging so that a
+girl can manage two houses in the same neighborhood. She gets
+breakfast for the Joneses, say; leaves at nine for market; orders
+for both families; goes to the Smiths and serves their hearty meal
+at noon; goes back to the Joneses at five, and serves dinner."
+
+"And what does she get for all this?" Mrs. Salisbury asked in a
+skeptical tone.
+
+"The Joneses pay her twenty-five, I believe, and the Smiths fifteen
+for two in each family."
+
+"What's to prevent the two families having all meals together," Mrs.
+Salisbury asked, "instead of having to patch out with meals when
+they had no maid?"
+
+"Well, I suppose they could. Then she'd get her original thirty, and
+five more for the two extra--you see, it comes out the same, thirty-
+five dollars a month. Perhaps families will pool their expenses that
+way some day. It would save buying, too, and table linen, and gas
+and fuel. And it would be fun! All at our house this month, and all
+at Aunt Mat's next month!"
+
+"There's one serious objection to sharing a maid," Mrs. Salisbury
+presently submitted; "she would tell the other family all your
+private business."
+
+"If they chose to pump her, she might," Alexandra said, with
+unintentional rebuke, and Mr. Salisbury added amusedly:
+
+"No, no, no, Mother! That's an exploded theory. How much has Justine
+told you of her last place?"
+
+"But that's no proof she WOULDN'T, Kane," Mrs. Salisbury ended the
+talk by rising from her chair, taking another nearer the reading
+lamp, and opening a new magazine. "Justine is a sensible girl," she
+added, after a moment. "I have always said that. When all the
+discussing and theorizing in the world is done, it comes down to
+this: a servant in my house shall do AS I SAY. I have told her that
+I dislike this ridiculous club idea, and I expect to hear no more of
+the matter!"
+
+There came a day in December when Mrs. Salisbury came home from the
+Forum Club in mid-afternoon. Her face was a little pale as she
+entered the house, her lips tightly set. It was a Thursday
+afternoon, and Justine's kitchen was empty. Lettuce and peeled
+potatoes were growing crisp in yellow bowls of ice water, breaded
+cutlets were in the ice chest, a custard cooled in a north window.
+
+Mrs. Salisbury walked rapidly through the lower rooms, came back to
+the library, and sat down at her desk. A fire was laid in the wide,
+comfortable fireplace, but she did not light it. She sat, hatted,
+veiled and gloved, staring fixedly ahead of her for some moments.
+Then she said aloud, in a firm but quiet voice: "Well, this
+positively ENDS it!"
+
+A delicate film of dust obscured the shining surface of the writing
+table. Mrs. Salisbury's mouth curved into a cold smile when she saw
+it; and again she spoke aloud.
+
+"Thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents, indeed!" she said. "Ha!"
+
+Nearly two hours later Alexandra rushed in. Alexandra looked her
+prettiest; she was wearing new furs for the first time; her face was
+radiantly fresh, under the sweep of her velvet hat. She found her
+mother stretched comfortably on the library couch with a book. Mrs.
+Salisbury smiled, and there was a certain placid triumph in her
+smile.
+
+"Here you are, Mother!" Alexandra burst out joyously. "Mother, I've
+just had the most extraordinary experience of my life!" She sat down
+beside the couch, her eyes dancing, her cheeks two roses, and pushed
+back her furs, and flung her gloves aside. "My dear," said
+Alexandra, catching up the bunch of violets she held for an ecstatic
+sniff, and then dropping it in her lap again, "wait until I tell
+you--I'm engaged!"
+
+"My darling girl--" Mrs. Salisbury said, rapturously, faintly.
+
+"To Owen, of course," Alexandra rushed on radiantly. "But wait until
+I tell you! It's the most awful thing I ever did in my life, in a
+WAY," she interrupted herself to say more soberly. Her voice died
+away, and her eyes grew dreamy.
+
+Mrs. Salisbury's heart, rising giddily to heaven on a swift rush of
+thanks, felt a cold check.
+
+"How do you mean awful, dear?" she said apprehensively.
+
+"Well, wait, and I'll tell you," Alexandra said, recalled and
+dimpling again. "I met Jim Vance and Owen this morning at about
+twelve, and Jim simply got red as a beet, and vanished--poor Jim!"
+The girl paid the tribute of a little sigh to the discarded suitor.
+"So then Owen asked me to lunch with him--right there in the Women's
+exchange, so it was quite comme il faut, Mother," she pursued, "and,
+my dear! he told me, as calmly as THAT!--that he might go to New
+York when Jim goes--Jim's going to visit a lot of Eastern
+relatives!--so that he, Owen I mean, could study some Eastern
+settlement houses and get some ideas--"
+
+"I think the country is going mad on this subject of settlement
+houses, and reforms, and hygiene!" Mrs. Salisbury said, with some
+sharpness. "However, go on!"
+
+"Well, Owen spoke to me a little about--about Jim's liking me, you
+know," Alexandra continued. "You know Owen can get awfully red and
+choky over a thing like that," she broke off to say animatedly. "But
+to-day he wasn't--he was just brotherly and sweet. And, Mother, he
+got so confidential, you know, that I simply PULLED my courage
+together, and I determined to talk honestly to him. I clasped my
+hands--I could see in one of the mirrors that I looked awfully nice,
+and that helped!--I clasped my hands, and I looked right into his
+eyes, and I said, quietly, you know, 'Owen,' I said 'I'm going to
+tell you the truth. You ask me why I don't care for Jim; this is the
+reason. I like you too much to care for any other man that way. I
+don't want you to say anything now, Owen,' I said, 'or to think I
+expect you to tell me that you have always cared for me. That'd be
+too FLAT. And I'm not going to say that I'll never care for anyone
+else, for I'm only twenty, and I don't know. But I couldn't see so
+much of you, Owen,' I said, 'and not care for you, and it seems as
+natural to tell you so as it would for me to tell another girl. You
+worry sometimes because you can't remember your father,' I said,
+'and because your mother is so undemonstrative with you; but I want
+you to think, the next time you feel sort of out of it, that there
+is a woman who really and truly thinks that you are the best man in
+the world--'"
+
+Mrs. Salisbury had risen to a sitting position; her eyes, fixed upon
+her daughter's face, were filled with utter horror.
+
+"You are not serious, my child!" she gasped. "Alexandra, tell me
+that this is some monstrous joke--"
+
+"Serious! I never was more serious in my life," the girl said
+stoutly. "I said just that. It was easy enough, after I once got
+started. And I thought to myself, even then, that if he didn't care
+he'd be decent enough to say so honestly--"
+
+"But, my child--my CHILD!" the mother said, beside herself with
+outraged pride. "You cannot mean that you so far forgot a woman's
+natural delicacy--her natural shrinking--her dignity--Why, what must
+Owen think of you! Can't you SEE what a dreadful thing you've done,
+dear!" Her mind, working desperately for an escape from the
+unbearable situation, seized upon a possible explanation. "My
+darling," she said, "you must try at once to convince him that you
+were only joking--you can say half-laughingly--"
+
+"But wait!" Alexandra interrupted, unruffled. "He put his hand over
+mine, and he turned as red as a beet--I wish you could have seen his
+face, Mother!--and he said--But," and the happy color flooded her
+face, "I honestly can't tell you what he said, Mother," Alexandra
+confessed. "Only it was DARLING, and he is honestly the best man I
+ever saw in my life!"
+
+"But, dearest, dearest," her mother said, with desperate appeal.
+"Don't you see that you can't possibly allow things to remain this
+way? Your dignity, dear, the most precious thing a girl has, you've
+simply thrown it to the winds! Do you want Owen to remind you some
+day that YOU were the one to speak first?" Her voice sank
+distressfully, a shamed red burned in her cheeks. "Do you want Owen
+to be able to say that you cared, and admitted that you cared,
+before he did?"
+
+Alexandra, staring blankly at her mother, now burst into a gay
+laugh.
+
+"Oh, Mother, aren't you DARLING--but you're so funny!" she said.
+"Don't you suppose I know Owen well enough to know whether he cares
+for me or not? He doesn't know it himself, that's the whole point,
+or rather he DIDN'T, for he does now! And he'll go on caring more
+and more every minute, you'll see! He might have been months finding
+it out, even if he didn't go off to New York with Jim, and marry
+some little designing dolly-mop of an actress, or some girl he met
+on the train. Owen's the sort of dear, big, old, blundering fellow
+that you have to PROTECT, Mother. And it came up so naturally--if
+you'd been there--"
+
+"I thank Heaven I was not there!" Mrs. Salisbury said feelingly.
+"Came up naturally! Alexandra, what are you MADE of? Where are your
+natural feelings? Why, do you realize that your Grandmother Porter
+kept your grandfather waiting three months for an answer, even? She
+lived to be an old, old lady, and she used to say that a woman ought
+never let her husband know how much she cared for him, and
+Grandfather Porter RESPECTED and ADMIRED your grandmother until the
+day of her death!"
+
+"A dear, cold-blooded old lady she must have been!" said Alexandra,
+unimpressed.
+
+"On the contrary," Mrs. Salisbury said quickly. "She was a beautiful
+and dignified woman. And when your father first began to call upon
+me," she went on impressively, "and Mattie teased me about him, I
+was so furious--my feelings were so outraged!--that I went upstairs
+and cried a whole evening, and wouldn't see him for DAYS!"
+
+"Well, dearest," Alexandra said cheerfully, "You may have been a
+perfect little lady, but it's painfully evident that I take after
+the other side of the house! As for Owen ever having the nerve to
+suggest that I gave him a pretty broad hint--" the girl's voice was
+carried away on a gale of cheerful laughter. "He'd get no dessert
+for weeks to come!" she threatened gaily. "You know I'm convinced,
+Mother," Sandy went on more seriously, "that this business
+of a man's doing all the asking is going out. When women have their
+own industrial freedom, and their own well-paid work, it'll be a
+great compliment to suggest to a man that one's willing to give
+everything up, and keep his house and raise his children for him.
+And if, for any reason, he SHOULDN'T care for that girl, she'll not
+be embarrassed--"
+
+Mrs. Salisbury shut her eyes, her face and form rigid, one hand
+spasmodically clutching the couch.
+
+"Alexandra, I BEG--" she said faintly, "I ENTREAT that you will not
+expect me to listen to such outrageous and indelicate and COARSE--
+yes, coarse!--theories! Think what you will, but don't ask your
+mother--"
+
+"Now, listen, darling," Alexandra said soothingly, kneeling down and
+gathering her mother affectionately in her arms, "Owen did every bit
+of this except the very first second and, if you'll just FORGET IT,
+in a few months he'll be thinking he did it all! Wait until you see
+him; he's walking on air! He's dazed. My dear"--the strain of happy
+confidence was running smoothly again--"my dear, we lunched
+together, and then we went out in the car to Burning Woods, and sat
+there on the porch, and talked and TALKED. It was perfectly
+wonderful! Now, he's gone to tell his mother, but he's coming back
+to take us all to dinner. Is that all right? And, Mother, that
+reminds me, we are going to live in the new Settlement House, and
+have a girl like Justine!"
+
+"WHAT!" Mrs. Salisbury said, smitten sick with disappointment.
+
+"Or Justine herself, if you'll let us have her," Sandy went on. "You
+see, living in that big Sargent house--"
+
+"Do you mean that Owen's mother doesn't want to give up that house?"
+Mrs. Salisbury asked coldly. "I thought it was Owen's?"
+
+"It IS Owen's, Mother, but fancy living there!" Sandy said
+vivaciously. "Why, I'd have to keep seven or eight maids, and do
+nothing but manage them, and do just as everyone else does!"
+
+"You'd be the richest young matron in town," her mother said
+bitterly.
+
+"Oh, I know, Mother, but that seems sort of mean to the other girls!
+Anyway, we'd much rather live in the ducky little Settlement house,
+and entertain our friends at the Club, do you see? And Justine is to
+run a little cooking school, do you see? For everyone says that
+management of food and money is the most important thing to teach
+the poorer class. Won't that be great?"
+
+"I personally can't agree with you," the mother said lifelessly.
+"Here I spend all my life since your babyhood trying to make friends
+for you among the nicest people, trying to establish our family upon
+an equal basis with much richer people, and you, instead of living
+as you should, with beautiful things about you, choose to go down to
+River Street, and drudge among the slums!"
+
+"Oh, come, Mother; River Street is the breeziest, prettiest part of
+town, with the river and those fields opposite. Wait until we clean
+it up, and get some gardens going--"
+
+"As for Justine, I am DONE with her," continued the older woman
+dispassionately. "All this has rather put it out of my head, but I
+meant to tell you at once, she goes out of my house THIS WEEK!
+Against my express wish, she was the guest of the Forum Club to-day.
+'Miss J. C. Harrison,' the program said, and I could hardly believe
+my eyes when I saw Justine! She had on a black charmeuse gown, black
+velvet about her hair--and I was supposed to sit there and listen to
+my own maid! I slipped out; it was too much. To-morrow morning,"
+Mrs. Salisbury ended dramatically, "I dismiss her!"
+
+"Mother!" said Alexandra, aghast. "What reason will you give her?"
+
+"I shall give her no reason," Mrs. Salisbury said sternly. "I am
+through with apologies to servants! To-morrow I shall apply at
+Crosby's for a good, old-fashioned maid, who doesn't have to have
+her daily bath, and doesn't expect to be entertained at my club!"
+
+"But, listen, darling," Alexandra pleaded. "DON'T make a fuss now.
+Justine was my darling belle-mere's guest to-day, don't you see?
+It'll be so awkward, scrapping right in the face of Owen's news.
+Couldn't you sort of shelve the Justine question for a while?"
+
+"Dearie, be advised," Mrs. Salisbury said, with solemn warning. "You
+DON'T want a girl like that, dear. You will be a SOMEBODY, Sandy.
+You can't do just what any other girl would do, as Owen Sargent's
+wife! Don't live with Mrs. Sargent if you don't want to, but take a
+pretty house, dear. Have two or three little maids, in nice caps and
+aprons. Why, Alice Snow, whose husband is merely an automobile
+salesman, has a LOVELY home! It's small, of course, but you could
+have your choice!"
+
+"Well, nothing's settled!" Alexandra rose to go upstairs, gathered
+her furs about her. "Only promise me to let Justine's question
+stand," she begged.
+
+"Well," Mrs. Salisbury consented unwillingly.
+
+"Ah, there's Dad!" Alexandra cried suddenly, as the front door
+opened and shut. With a joyous rush, she flew to meet him, and Mrs.
+Salisbury could imagine, from the sounds she heard, exactly how
+Sandy and her great news and her furs and her father's kisses were
+all mixed up together. "What--what--what--why, what am I going to do
+for a girl?" "Oh, Dad, darling, say that you're glad!" "Luckiest
+fellow this side of the Rocky Mountains, and I'll tell him so!" "And
+you and Mother to dine with us every week, promise that, Dad!"
+
+She heard them settle down on the lowest step, Sandy obviously in
+her father's lap; heard the steady murmur of confidence and advice.
+
+"Wise girl, wise girl," she heard the man's voice say. "That keeps
+you in touch with life, Sandy; that's real. And then, if some day
+you have reasons for wanting a bigger house and a more quiet
+neighborhood--" Several frantic kisses interrupted the speaker here,
+but he presently went on: "Why, you can always move! Meantime, you
+and Owen are helping less fortunate people, you're building up a lot
+of wonderful associations--"
+
+Well, it was all probably for the best; it would turn out quite
+satisfactorily for everyone, thought the mother, sitting in the
+darkening library, and staring rather drearily before her. Sandy
+would have children, and children must have big rooms and sunshine,
+if it can be managed possibly. The young Sargents would fall nicely
+into line, as householders, as parents, as hospitable members of
+society.
+
+But it was all so different from her dreams, of a giddy, spoiled
+Sandy, the petted wife of an adoring rich man; a Sandy despotically
+and yet generously ruling servants, not consulting Justine as an
+equal, in a world of working women--
+
+And she was not even to have the satisfaction of discharging
+Justine! The maid had her rights, her place in the scheme of things,
+her pride.
+
+"I declare, times have changed!" Mrs. Salisbury said to herself
+involuntarily. She mused over the well-worn phrase; she had never
+used it herself before; its truth struck her forcibly for the first
+time.
+
+"I remember my mother saying that," thought she, "and how old-
+fashioned and conventional we thought her! I remember she said it
+when Mat and I went to dances, after we were married; it seemed
+almost wrong to her! Dear me! And I remember Ma's horror when Mat
+went to a hospital for her first baby. 'If there is a thing that
+belongs at home,' Ma said, 'it does seem to me it's a baby!' And my
+asking people to dinner by telephone, and the Fosters having two
+bathrooms in their house--Ma thought that such a ridiculous
+affectation! But what WOULD she say now? For those things were only
+trifles, after all," Mrs. Salisbury sighed, in all honesty. "But
+NOW, why, the world is simply being turned upside down with these
+crazy new notions!" And again she paused, surprised to hear herself
+using another old, familiar phrase. "Ma used to say that very thing,
+too," said Mrs. Salisbury to herself. "Poor Ma!"
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of The Treasure, by Kathleen Norris
+
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