ury 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 w