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 c