ivate families. She was
capable and strong and was never out of a job. She never took any
"sass" from her mistress; in this respect she was quite up to date among
American "help."

At the time she first met Marie she had been working for a family
several years, and had reduced her employer to a state of wholesome awe.
She remained, like a queen, in the kitchen, whence she banished all
objectionable intruders. Her mistress had a married daughter, also
living in the house, who at first was wont to give orders to Katie, and
to interfere with her generally. One day Katie drove her out of the
kitchen with a volley of broken English. The daughter complained to the
mother, who took Katie's side. "You don't belong in the kitchen," she
said to her indignant daughter.

This episode filled Katie with contempt for her mistress.

"She ought to have taken her daughter's side against me," she said, "you
bet I would have, if I had been in her place."

The daughter had two young children. It was to take care of them that
Marie came into the household. Marie's mistress liked to stay in bed and
read novels, and this experience is the one described by Marie in an
earlier chapter, how she locked herself and the children in the
store-room and read her mistress's books.

Katie fell in love with Marie almost at once. She was fifteen years
older than the young girl and as she had never had any children, all the
instinctive love of an unusually instinctive nature seemed to be given
to Marie. She saw that Marie was not practical or energetic, and this
probably intensified the interest felt by the more active and capable
woman. She took the young girl under her wing, and has been, and is, as
entirely devoted to her as mothers sometimes are to their children.

The German cook was about thirty years old at that time and had never
loved a man, though she had had plenty of temporary and merely
instinctive relations with the other sex. So it was her entire capacity
for love, maternal and other, that she gave to Marie.

Almost at once Katie began to treat Marie as her ward. She took her side
against her mistress, when the latter scolded the girl on account of her
indolence or slowness. "Marie is so young," she would say, "almost a
child; and we ought to go easy on her." She also looked after Marie's
morals and tried to prevent her being out late at night. This kind of
care had its amusing side, as Katie herself was none too strict about
herself