wing her just how she liked the
table set. After dinner, cheerfully polishing glasses, she suddenly
burst into song as she stood at the open pantry window, some ten feet
from the side porch. The words floated out:

"And the band was bravely playing
The song of the cross and crown--
Nearer, my god, to thee--
As the ship--"

Mrs. Tressady sat up, a stirring shadow among the shadows of the porch.

"I must ask her not to do that," she announced quietly, and disappeared.

"And I spoke to her about joining in the conversation at dinner," she
said, returning. "She took it very nicely."

Belle's youthful spirits were too high to succumb to one check,
however. Five minutes later she burst forth again:

"Ring, ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, on your telephone--
And ring me up tonight--"

"Soft pedal, Belle!" Jerry called.

Belle laughed.

"Sure!" she called back. "I forgot."

Presently the bright blot of light that fell from the pantry window on
the little willow trees vanished silently, and they could hear Belle's
voice in the kitchen.

"Good-natured," said Molly.

"Strong," Mrs. Porter said.

"And pretty as a peach!" said Peter Porter.

"Oh, she'll do!" Jerry Tressady said contentedly.

She was good-natured, strong, and pretty indeed, and she did a great
deal. Timmy's little garments fluttered on the clothes-line before
breakfast; Timmy's room was always in order: Timmy was always dainty
and clean. Belle adored him and the baby returned her affection. They
murmured together for hours down on the river bank or on the shady
porch. Belle always seemed cheerful.

Nor could it be said that Belle did not know her place. She revelled in
her title. "This is Mrs. Tressady's maid," Belle would say mincingly at
the telephone, "and she does not allow her servants to make engagements
for her." "My friends want me to enter my name for a prize for the most
popular girl in the Emville bazaar, Mrs. Tressady; but I thought I
would ask your permission first."

But there was a sort of breezy familiarity about her very difficult to
check. On her second day at the ranch she suddenly came behind Jerry
Tressady seated on the piano bench and slipped a sheet of music before
him.

"Won't you just run over that last chorus for me, Mr. Tress'dy?" asked
Belle. "I have to sing that at a party Thursday night and I can't seem
to get it."

No maid between Washington Square and the Bronx Zoo would have ask