e suspected of
being untidy beneath his magnificent exterior. Once when she had
discovered a bucket of apple-parings tucked away under the sink, where
it had stood for days, he had given "notice" so unexpectedly and so
haughtily that she had been afraid ever since to look under dish-towels
or into hidden places while he was absent. Out of the problem of the
South "the servant question" had arisen to torment and intimidate the
housekeepers of Dinwiddie; and inferior service at high wages was
regarded of late as a thing for which one had come to be thankful. Had
they still lived in the little house, Virginia would gladly have done
her work for the sake of the peace and the cleanliness which it would
have ensured; but since the change in their circumstances, Oliver and
the girls had grown so dependent upon the small luxuries of living that
she put up with anything--even with the appalling suspicion that every
mouthful she ate was not clean--rather than take the risk of having her
three servants desert in a body. When she had unwisely complained to
Oliver, he had remarked impatiently that he couldn't be bothered about
the housekeeping, and Lucy had openly accused her of being "fussy."

After this she had said nothing more, but gathering suddenly all her
energies, she had precipitated a scene with the servants (which ended to
her relief in the departure of the magnificent butler) and had
reorganized at a stroke the affairs of her household. For all her
gentleness, she was not incapable of decisive action, and though it had
always been easier for her to work herself than to direct others, her
native talent for domesticity had enabled her to emerge triumphantly out
of this crisis. Now, on her forty-fifth birthday, she could reflect with
pride (the pride of a woman who has mastered her traditional _metier de
femme_) that there was not a house in Dinwiddie which had better food
or smoother service than she provided in hers. For more and more, as
Oliver absorbed himself in his work, which kept him in New York many
months of the year, and the children grew so big that they no longer
needed her, did her life centre around the small monotonous details of
cooking and cleaning. Only when, as occasionally happened, the rest of
the family were absent together, Oliver about his plays, Lucy on a visit
to Richmond, and Harry and Jenny at college, an awful sense of futility
descended upon her, and she felt that both the purpose and the
init