ed 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.