keep getting another parlor
girl, or door girl, or nursery girl, and wondering that the things
don't grow easier. It's like that queer rule in arithmetic about
fractions,--where dividing and multiplying get all mixed up, and you
can't hold on to the reason why, in your mind, long enough to look
at it."

"Why didn't you go down and see the kitchen?"

"Because, how could she leave those tots to take care of themselves
while she showed us? Our minds were made up. You said just the
truth; if we can try it anywhere, we can try it there. And whatever
the kitchen is, it's only our place to begin on. We'll have it all
right, or something near it, before we've been there a fortnight.
It's only a room we take, where the work is given in to do. If we
had one anywhere else, we should expect to fix up and settle in it
according to our own notions, and why not there? We're rent free,
and paid for our work. I'm going to have things of my own; personal
property. If I want a chandelier, I'll save up and get one; only I
sha'n't want it. There's ways to contrive, Kate; and real fun doing
it."

An hour afterward, they were on their way back, with their leather
bags.

Baby Karen was asleep, and Mrs. Scherman came down-stairs to let
them in again, with Marmaduke holding to her hand, and Sinsie
hopping along behind. They all went into the kitchen together.

Mrs. McCormick had "cleared it up," so that there was at least a
surface tidiness and cheerfulness. The floor was freshly scrubbed,
the table-tops scoured down, the fire made, and the gas lighted.
Mrs. McCormick had gone home, to be ready for her own husband and
her two "boys" when they should come in from their work to their
suppers.

The kitchen was in an L; there were two windows looking out upon a
bricked yard. Bel Bree kept the points of the compass in her head.

"Those are south windows," said she. "We can have plants in them.
And it's real nice their opening out on a level."

Forward, the house ran underground. They used the front basement for
a store-room. Above the kitchen, in the L, was the dining-room. A
short, separate flight of stairs led to it; also a dumb waiter ran
up and down between china closet and kitchen pantry. Both kitchen
and dining-room were small; the L had only the width of the hall and
the additional space to where the first window opened in the western
wall.

In one corner of the kitchen were set tubs; a long cover slid over
them, and formed a si