as running away with alarming speed; she must
be dressed for a meeting at eleven o'clock, and, like most women of her
age, she found dressing a slow and troublesome matter; she did not like
to be hurried with her brushes and cold creams, her ruffles and veil.

The thought of the unmade beds did not really trouble her when, trim
and dainty, she went off in a friend's car to the club at eleven
o'clock, but when she came back, nearly two hours later, it was
distinctly an annoyance to find her bedroom still untouched. She was
tired then, and wanted her lunch; but instead she replaced her street
dress with a loose house gown, and went resolutely to work.

Musing over her solitary luncheon, she found the whole thing a little
absurd. There was still the drawing-room to be put in order, and no
reason in the world why Justine should not do it. The girl was not
overworked, and she was being paid thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents
every month! Justine was big and strong, she could toss the little
extra work off without any effort at all.

She wondered why it is almost a physical impossibility for a nice woman
to ask a maid the simplest thing in the world, if she is fairly certain
that that maid will be ungracious about it.

"Dear me!" thought Mrs. Salisbury, eating her chop and salad, her hot
muffin and tart without much heart to appreciate these delicacies, "How
much time I have spent in my life, going through imaginary
conversations with maids! Why couldn't I just step to the pantry door
and say, in a matter-of-fact tone, 'I'm afraid I must ask you to put
the sitting-room in order, Justine. Miss Sandy has apparently forgotten
all about it. I'll see that it doesn't occur again.' And I could
add--now that I think of it--'I will pay you for your extra time, if
you like, and if you will remind me at the end of the month.'"

"Well, she may not like it, but she can't refuse," was her final
summing up. She went out to the kitchen with a deceptive air of
composure.

Justine's occupation, when Mrs. Salisbury found her, strengthened the
older woman's resolutions. The maid, in a silent and spotless kitchen,
was writing a letter. Sheets of paper were strewn on the scoured white
wood of the kitchen table; the writer, her chin cupped in her hand, was
staring dreamily out of the kitchen window. She gave her mistress an
absent smile, then laid down her pen and stood up.

"I'm writing here," she explained, "so that I can catch the milkm