he began, "I guess you know she's queer; I thought
I knew most of the brands of wine and women, as old Judge Howells used
to say, but this one beats me! I came 'round to the yard--she's hired
the Bateman place, furnished, you know, while the Batemans are towering
in Canada, she and her sister, who's a doctor lady. I hope the doctor'll
be a kinder balance wheel, but she's got a chore!

"As I was saying, I came 'round the yard, aiming for the kitchen door,
when I heard somebody calling, and there she was opening the front door
to Nellie Small. Don't you remember Nellie Small? She was the Batemans'
waitress for three months--poor young things--and smashed a lot of their
nice wedding presents, the other girl told _me_. She's the kind that
always looks so fine and never dusts the hind legs of the table. I
wasn't none too pleased at the sight of her, but Miss Van Arden, she was
awful polite; took us both right into the _parlor_ and made us set down.
I got worried thinking she'd mistook, and I hesitate a minute and then I
says:

"'Miss Van Arden, I was going 'round to the kitchen door; I've come to
see about the cook's place.'

"'I know,' says she right quick, with a little lift of her pretty brown
head. 'I know,' says she, 'you're Mrs. Biff, and you,' says she, smiling
so pretty on that Nellie trash, '_you're_ Miss Small.'

"'I _am_,' says Nellie, tossing her head.

"So then she begins; and from that beginning, and calling us in that
way, you can imagine how she went on. She explained that while she was a
poor girl at her aunty's she read a lovely book about an imaginary
country called Altruria; and that the gentleman who wrote it didn't
think we _could_ do that way in this country; she supposed we couldn't,
but she was going to try, and she hoped we would like her and help her.
She didn't know much about housekeeping; she had helped her aunty, but
it was writing letters and doing errands and dusting brac-a-brac (and
she laughed); the only things she knew how to do right well was to dust
and to polish jewelry and make tea. But she hoped to learn; and she had
got all the machinery she could think of; there was an electric washer
and an ironing machine, and a dishwashing machine, and bread and cake
machines, and we ought not to need to work more than eight hours a day.
She didn't believe really in more than six hours a day, but at first
maybe we wouldn't mind eight.

"I could see that Nellie drinking it all in, getting mo