o her service suiting them.

"I suppose we could do anything reasonable," said Kate Sencerbox.

"I wonder if it is reasonable!" said Mrs. Scherman. "Mr. Scherman
has six shirts a week, and the children's things count up fearfully,
and the ironing is nice work. I'm afraid you wouldn't think you had
any time left for living. The clothes hardly ever all come up before
Thursday morning."

"And the cooking and all are just the same those days?" asked Kate.

"Why yes, pretty nearly, except just Mondays. Monday always has to
be rather awful. But after that, we _do_ expect to live. We couldn't
hold our breaths till Thursday."

"I guess there's something that isn't quite reasonable, somewhere,"
said Kate. "But I don't think it's you, Mrs. Scherman, not
meaningly. I wonder if two or three sensible people couldn't
straighten it out? There ought to be a way. The nursery girl helps,
doesn't she?"

"Yes. She does the baby's things. But while baby is so little, I
can't spare her for much more. With doing them, and her own clothes,
I don't seem to have her more than half the time, now."

Kate Sencerbox sat still, considering.

Bel Bree was afraid that was the last of it. In that one still
minute she could almost feel her beautiful plan crumbling, by little
bits, like a heap of sand in a minute-glass, away into the opposite
end where things had been before, with nobody to turn them upside
down again. Which _was_ upside down, or right side up?

She had not thought a word about big, impossible washings.

Kate spoke out at last.

"Every one brings the work of one, you see," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"I wish there needn't be any nursery girl."

Mrs. Scherman lifted her eyebrows in utter amaze. The suggestion to
the ordinary Irish mind would have been, as she had already
experienced, another nurse; certainly not the dispensing with that
official altogether.

"What wages do you pay, Mrs. Scherman?" was Kate's next question. It
came, evidently in the process of a reasoning calculation; not, as
usual, with the grasping of demand.

"Four dollars to the cook. Which _is_ the cook?"

"I don't believe we know yet," answered Bel Bree, laughing in the
glee of her recovering spirits. "But I think it would probably be
me. Kate can make molasses candy, but she hasn't had the chance for
much else. And I should like to have the kitchen in my charge. I
feel responsible for the home-iness of it, for I started the plan."

With th