erica. The manager of the office pronounced her character, as set down
in writing, faultless, and Mrs. Lander engaged her. "You want to look
afta this young lady," she said, indicating Clementina. "I can look afta
myself," but Ellida took charge of them both on the train out from Boston
with prompt intelligence.

"We got to get used to it, I guess," Mrs. Lander confided at the first
chance of whispering to Clementina.

Within a month after washing the faces and combing the hair of all her
brothers and sisters who would suffer it at her hands, Clementina's own
head was under the brush of a lady's maid, who was of as great a
discreetness in her own way as Clementina herself. She supplied the
defects of Mrs. Lander's elementary habits by simply asking if she should
get this thing and that thing for the toilet, without criticising its
absence,--and then asking whether she should get the same things for her
young lady. She appeared to let Mrs. Lander decide between having her
brushes in ivory or silver, but there was really no choice for her, and
they came in silver. She knew not only her own place, but the places of
her two ladies, and she presently had them in such training that they
were as proficient in what they might and might not do for themselves and
for each other, as if making these distinctions were the custom of their
lives.

Their hearts would both have gone out to Ellida, but Ellida kept them at
a distance with the smooth respectfulness of the iron hand in the glove
of velvet; and Clementina first learned from her to imagine the
impassable gulf between mistress and maid.

At the end of her month she gave them, out of a clear sky, a week's
warning. She professed no grievance, and was not moved by Mrs. Lander's
appeal to say what wages she wanted. She would only say that she was
going to take a place an Commonwealth Avenue, where a friend of hers was
living, and when the week was up, she went, and left her late mistresses
feeling rather blank. "I presume we shall have to get anotha," said Mrs.
Lander.

"Oh, not right away!" Clementina pleaded.

"Well, not right away," Mrs. Lander assented; and provisionally they each
took the other into her keeping, and were much freer and happier
together.

Soon after Clementina was startled one morning, as she was going in to
breakfast, by seeing Mr. Fane at the clerk's desk. He did not see her; he
was looking down at the hotel register, to compute the bill of a
depart