"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