have to send her
to an asylum!'

"'That's the thing,' said I, 'and we'd better do it the first thing
in the morning. I wouldn't tackle her to-night, because she's
probably excited, and like as not would make a great deal of
trouble.'

"And that," said the detective, "was where Mr. Perkins and I made
our mistake. Next morning she wasn't to be found, and to this day I
haven't heard a word of her. She disappeared just like that," he
said, snapping his fingers. "Of course, I don't mean to say that
anything supernatural occurred. She simply must have slipped down
and out while we were asleep. The front door was wide open in the
morning, and a woman answering to her description was seen to leave
the Park station, five miles from the Perkins house, on the six-
thirty train that morning."

"And you have no idea where she is now?" I asked of the detective,
when he had finished.

"No," he answered, "not the slightest. For all I know she may be
cooking for you at this very minute."

With which comforting remark he left me.

For my part, I hope the detective was wrong. If I thought there was
a possibility of Margaret's ever being queen of my culinary
department, I should either give up house-keeping at once and join
some simple community where every man is his own chef, or dine
forevermore on canned goods.

JANE

She was quite the reverse of beautiful--to some she was positively
unpleasant to look upon; but that made no difference to Mrs.
Thaddeus Perkins, who, after long experience with domestics, had
come to judge of the value of a servant by her performance rather
than by her appearance. The girl--if girl she were, for she might
have been thirty or sixty, so far as any one could judge from a
merely superficial glance at her face and figure--was neat of
aspect, and, what was more, she had come well recommended. She bore
upon her face every evidence of respectability and character, as
well as one or two lines which might have indicated years or
toothache--it was difficult to decide which. On certain days, when
the weather was very warm and she had much to do, the impression was
that the lines meant years, and many of them, accentuated as they
were by her pallor, the whiteness of her face making the lines seem
almost black in their intensity. When she smiled, however, which
she rarely did--she was solemn enough to have been a butler--one was
impressed with the idea of hours of pain from a wicked to