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