u all of a sudden
to object to candles?"

"It's not candles--it's the idea of--Oh, all the fuss and bother, when
everybody's so tired, and the weather's so hot, and it's going to cost
too much anyhow."

"Well, what would you have us fuss and bother about, if not over having
everything nice when we entertain?" Mrs. Emery's air of enforced
patience was strained.

Lydia surveyed her from the hall in silence. "That's just it--that's
just it," she said finally, and went away.

Mrs. Emery laid down her pen to laugh to herself over the queer ways of
children. "They begin to have notions with their first teeth, and I
suppose they don't get over them till _their_ first baby begins to
teethe."

When Lydia arrived at her sister's house, she found that competent
housekeeper engaged in mending the lace curtains of her parlor. She had
about her a battery of little ingenious devices to which she called
Lydia's attention with pride. "I've taught myself lace-mending just by
main strength and awkwardness," she observed, fitting a hoop over a torn
place, "and it's not because I have any natural knack, either. If
there's anything I hate to do, it's to sew. But these curtains do go to
pieces so. I wash them myself, to be careful, but they are so fine.
Still," she cast a calculating eye on the work before her, "I'll be
through by the end of this week, anyhow--if that new Swede will only
stay in the kitchen that long!"

She bent her head over her work again, holding it up to the light from
time to time and straining her eyes to catch the exact thread with her
almost impalpably fine needle. Lydia sat and fanned herself, looking
flushed and tired from the walk in the heat, and listening in silence to
Mrs. Mortimer's account of the various happenings of her household:
"And didn't I find that good-for-nothing negro wench had been having
that man--and goodness knows how many others--right here in the house. I
told Ralph I never would have another nigger--but I shall. You can't get
anything else half the time. I tell you, Lydia, the servant problem is
getting to be something perfectly terrible--it's--"

Lydia broke in to say, "Why don't you buy new ones?"

Mrs. Mortimer paused with uplifted needle to inquire wildly, "New
_what_?"

"New curtains, instead of spending a whole week in hot weather mending
those."

"Good gracious, child! Will you ever learn anything about the cost of
living! I think it's awful, the way Father and Mother hav