aded----

_Back in my Christian Room!_

My dears, here I am! I lasted just exactly one week. But I don't
care. I didn't wait to be fired--I went off--spontaneous combustion.

I did my honest best at first. It was a horrible house, spilling over
with fretful people and fretful things. There wasn't a cool space to
hang your eye on anywhere on the walls; you had to make your way
through the furniture and bric-a-brac as through traffic. The food,
save when there were guests, was wretched. The other servants--a
cross cook and a sharp-tongued second-girl--were inefficient and lazy
and quarrelsome.

The father was a dim, infrequent person who hardly registered on the
family film at all. He looked overworked and underfed and the only
time I ever heard him speak with any vigor was the night before I
left, when he was vehemently insisting (their room was just across
the hall from the nursery) that they simply had to cut down expenses,
and she was just as vehemently maintaining that it couldn't be done.

And the children! If any one had told me, eight days ago, that there
were two children loose in the land that I could not love, I should
have done battle. The boy was the sort of little boy who makes you
feel that Herod had the right idea, and the girl was the sort of
little girl who makes you feel it was a pity to stop with the
slaughter of the male infant.

It was the last day of my week. The youngsters and I had had a bad
breakfast and a skimpy, cold luncheon, and I was bidden to dress them
in their fussiest best and bring them in at the tag end of Mrs.
Laney's bridge afternoon. They were just sitting down to tea as I
came in. Tea! I was absolutely hungry after the long succession of
miserable meals, ready to recite "Only Three Grains of Corn, Mother,"
with moving gestures, and the sallow little wretches beside me were
clear cases of malnutrition. Well, there were three kinds of
delectable sandwiches and consomme with whipped cream and chocolate
with whipped cream and an opulent salad and wonderful little
cakes--four kinds--and candy and salted nuts. My mouth watered and I
know my nostrils quivered. First, I blush to say, I thought of hungry
me, and then I thought of the undernourished children, and then I
thought of the badly fed and badly cared for and badly treated
husband,