. I want it immediately. I am not in my dotage yet. I still have some
say-so in the firm. Well, what are you waiting for?"

"I was waiting to know if there was anything more, ma'am."

"If there had been I would have said so. Tell Hannah to come in as you go
out."

Eleanor looked at her grandmother expectantly, but there was no answering
glance. The old lady was evidently in one of her truculent moods that
brooked no interference.

"Has the plumber come?" she demanded of the elderly colored maid who
appeared at the door.

"No, ma'am. He can't get here till to-morrow."

"Tell him I won't wait. If he can't come within an hour he needn't come
at all. Where is Tom?"

Hannah's eyes shifted uneasily. "Tom? Why, Tom, he thought you discharged
him."

"So I did. But he's not to go until I get another butler. Send him up
here at once."

"But he ain't here," persisted Hannah fearfully, "He's went for good this
time."

Eleanor, sitting demurely by the door, had a moment of unholy exultation.
Old black Tom, the butler, had been Madam's chief domestic prop for a
quarter of a century. He had been the patient buffer between her and the
other servants, taking her domineering with unfailing meekness, and even
venturing her defense when mutiny threatened below stairs. "You-all don't
understand old Miss," he would say loyally. "She's all right, only she's
jes' nachully mean, dat's all."

In the turning of this humble worm, Eleanor felt in some vague way a
justification of her own rebellion.

His departure, however, did not tend to clear the domestic atmosphere. By
the time Madam had settled the plumbing question and expressed her
opinion of Tom and all his race, she was in no mood to deal leniently
with the shortcomings of a headstrong young granddaughter.

"Well," she said, addressing her at last, "why didn't you make it
midnight?"

"It's only a little after five." Eleanor knew she was putting up a feeble
defense, and her hands grew cold.

"It is nearly six, and it is dark. Couldn't you have withdrawn the
sunshine of your presence from the hospital half an hour sooner?"

Under her sharp glance there was a curious protective tenderness, the
savage concern of a lioness for her whelp; but Eleanor saw only the
scoffing expression in the keen eyes, and heard the note of irony in all
she said.

"Your going out to the hospital is all foolishness, anyhow," the old lady
continued, sorting her papers with efficiency. "Contagio