"

"No. We are lucky to have Ellen's niece coming. But I wish she were a
little older," said Miss Ethel. "Nineteen is very young."

"Yes," replied Mrs. Bradford, letting the conversation drop, for she
was not very fond of talking. And in the silence they looked back; and
to both of them nineteen seemed a rather ridiculous and foolish
age--even for a servant, who is supposed to be rather young.

Then Miss Ethel began again--talking on to try and banish the insistent
vision in her mind's eye of that square board over the privet hedge,
which she knew herself foolish to dwell upon. "I wish Caroline had not
lived with Ellen's sister and gone out as a day-girl to that little
grocer's shop in the Avenue. I'm afraid that may have spoilt her. But
it is Caroline or nobody. We may want a sensible middle-aged maid, but
in these days it isn't what you want--it's what you can get."

Mrs. Bradford nodded; and again they felt all over them that resentful
home-sickness for the past.

"One thing--we must begin as we mean to go on," said Miss Ethel. "If
mistresses were only firmer there would never be such ridiculous
proceedings as one hears about; but they are so afraid of losing maids
that they put up with anything. No wonder the girls find this out and
cease to have any respect for them. Look at Mrs. Graham! A latch-key
allowed, and no caps or aprons. That's swimming with the tide, with a
vengeance."

"There's no fear of Caroline wanting anything of that sort," said Mrs.
Bradford. "Ellen's sister, Mrs. Creddle, is as steady as Ellen."

"She'd need to be, with four children on her hands, and a husband like
one of those coco-nuts at Hull fair that have the husk partly left on,"
said Miss Ethel. "I never could understand how a nice-looking girl,
such as Mrs. Creddle was then, came to marry such a man."

Mrs. Bradford looked down at her fat hands and smiled a little, seeming
to see things in the matrimonial philosophy that no spinster was likely
to understand. Then after opening the door they both turned again,
from force of long habit, to look across the garden, and saw the square
board more plainly now than they had done when close under the hedge.
It stood there in the midst of the grass field--as if it were leading
on--while in the distance the wind from the east was blowing the smoke
like flags from the long row of chimney-tops in Emerald Avenue.

At last Miss Ethel said with a sort of doubtful hopefulness, as