Chapter I.

Lizzie, who happened to be the Salisbury's one servant at the time, was wasteful. It was almost her only fault, in Mrs. Salisbury's eyes, for such trifles as her habit of becoming excited and"saucy,"in moments of domestic stress, or to ask boldly for other holidays than her alternate Sunday and Thursday afternoons, or to resent at all times the intrusion of any person, even her mistress, into her immaculate kitchen, might have been overlooked. Mrs. Salisbury had been keeping house in a suburban town for twenty years; she was not considered an exacting mistress. She was perfectly willing to forgive Lizzie what was said in the hurried hours before the company dinner or impromptu lunch, and to let Lizzie slip out for a walk with her sister in the evening, and to keep out of the kitchen herself as much as was possible. So much might be conceded to a girl who was honest and clean, industrious, respectable, and a fair cook.

But the wastefulness was a serious matter. Mrs. Salisbury was a careful and an experienced manager; she resented waste; indeed, she could not afford to tolerate it. She liked to go into the kitchen herself every morning, to eye the contents of icebox and pantry, and decide upon needed stores. Enough butter, enough cold meat for dinner, enough milk for a nourishing soup, eggs and salad for luncheon—what about potatoes?

Lizzie deliberately frustrated this house-wifely ambition. She flounced and muttered when other hands than her own were laid upon her icebox. She turned on rushing faucets, rattled dishes in her pan. Yet Mrs. Salisbury felt that she must personally superintend these matters, because Lizzie was so wasteful. The girl had not been three months in the Salisbury family before all bills for supplies soared alarmingly.

This was all wrong. Mrs. Salisbury fretted over it a few weeks, then confided her concern to her husband. But Kane Salisbury would not listen to the details. He scowled at the introduction of the topic, glanced restlessly at his paper, murmured that Lizzie might be"fired"; and, when Mrs. Salisbury had resolutely bottled up her seething discontent inside of herself, she sometimes heard him murmuring,"Bad—bad—management"as he sat chewing his pipe-stem on the dark porch or beside the fire.

Alexandra, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the house, was equally incurious and unreasonable about domestic details.

"But, honestly, Mother, you know you're afraid of Lizzie, and she knows it,"Alexandra would declare gaily;"I can't tell you how I'd manage her, because she's not my servant, but I know I would do something!"

Beauty and intelligence gave Alexandra, even at eighteen, a certain serene poise and self-reliance that lifted her above the old-fashioned topics of"trouble with girls,"and housekeeping, and marketing. Alexandra touched these subjects under the titles of"budgets,""domestic science,"and"efficiency."Neither she nor her mother recognized the old, homely subjects under their new names, and so the daughter felt a lack of interest, and the mother a lack of sympathy, that kept them from understanding each other. Alexandra, ready to meet and conquer all the troubles of a badly managed world, felt that one small home did not present a very terrible problem. Poor Mrs. Salisbury only knew that it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep a general servant at all in a family of five, and that her husband's salary, of something a little less than four thousand dollars a year, did not at all seem the princely sum that they would have thought it when they were married on twenty dollars a week.

From the younger members of the family, Fred, who was fifteen, and Stanford, three years younger, she expected, and got, no sympathy. The three young Salisburys found money interesting only when they needed it for new gowns, or matinee tickets, or tennis rackets, or some kindred purchase. They needed it desperately, asked for it, got it, spent it, and gave it no further thought. It meant nothing to them that Lizzie was wasteful. It was only to their mother that the girl's slipshod ways were becoming an Absolute trial.

Lizzie, very neat and respectful, would interfere with Mrs. Salisbury's plan of a visit to the kitchen by appearing to ask for instructions before breakfast was fairly over. When the man of the house had gone, and before the children appeared, Lizzie would inquire:

"Just yourselves for dinner, Mrs. Salisbury?"

"Just ourselves. Let—me—see—"Mrs. Salisbury would lay down her newspaper, stir her cooling coffee. The memory of last night's vegetables would rise before her; there must be baked onions left, and some of the corn.

"The re was some lamb left, wasn't there?"she might ask.

Amazement on Lizzie's part.

"That wasn't such an Awful big leg, Mrs. Salisbury. And the boys had Perry White in, you know. The re's just a little plateful left. I gave Sam the bones."

Mrs. Salisbury could imagine the plateful: small, neat, cold.

"Sometimes I think that if you left the joint on the platter, Lizzie, there are scrapings, you know—"she might suggest.

"I scraped it,"Lizzie would answer briefly, conclusively.

"We ll, that for lunch, then, for Miss Sandy and me,"Mrs. Salisbury would decide hastily."I'll order something fresh for dinner. We re there any vegetables left?"

"The re were a few potatoes, enough for lunch,"Lizzie would admit guardedly.

"I'll order vegetables, too, then!"And Mrs. Salisbury would sigh. Every housekeeper knows that there is no economy in ordering afresh for every meal.

"And we need butter—"

"Butter again! Those two pounds gone?"

"The re's a little piece left, not enough, though. And I'm on my last cake of soap, and we need crackers, and vanilla, and sugar, unless you're not going to have a dessert, and salad oil—"

"Just get me a pencil, will you?"This was as usual. Mrs. Salisbury would pencil a long list, would bite her lips thoughtfully, and sigh as she read it over.

"Asparagus to-night, then. And, Lizzie, don't serve so much melted butter with it as you did last time; there must have been a cupful of melted butter. And, another time, save what little scraps of vegetables there are left; they help out so at lunch—"

"The re wasn't a saucerful of onions left last night,"Lizzie would assert,"and two cobs of corn, after I'd had my dinner. You couldn't do much with those. And, as for butter on the asparagus"—Lizzie was very respectful, but her tone would rise aggrievedly—"it was every bit eaten, Mrs. Salisbury!"

"Yes, I know. But we mustn't let these young vandals eat us out of house and home, you know,"the mistress would say, feeling as if she were doing something contemptibly small. And, worsted, she would return to her paper."But I don't care, we cannot afford it!"Mrs. Salisbury would say to herself, when Lizzie had gone, and very thoughtfully she would write out a check payable to"cash.""I used to use up little odds and ends so deliciously, years ago!"she sometimes reflected disconsolately."And Kane always says we never live as well now as we did then! He always praised my dinners."

Nowadays Mr. Salisbury was not so well satisfied. Lizzie rang the changes upon roasted and fried meats, boiled and creamed vegetables, baked puddings and canned fruits contentedly enough. She made cup cake and sponge cake, sponge cake and cup cake all the year round. Nothing was ever changed, no unexpected flavor ever surprised the palates of the Salisbury family. May brought strawberry shortcake, December cottage puddings, cold beef always made a stew; creamed codfish was never served without baked potatoes. The Salisbury table was a duplicate of some millions of other tables, scattered the length and breadth of the land.

"And still the bills go up!"fretted Mrs. Salisbury.

"We ll, why don't you fire her, Sally?"her husband asked, as he had asked of almost every maid they had ever had—of lazy Annies, and untidy Selmas, and ignorant Katies. And, as always, Mrs. Salisbury answered patiently:

"Oh, Kane, what's the use? It simply means my going to Miss Crosby's again, and facing that awful row of them, and beginning that I have three grown children, and no other help—"

"Mother, have you ever had a perfect maid?"Sandy had asked earnestly years before. Her mother spent a moment in reflection, arresting the hand with which she was polishing silver. Alexandra was only sixteen then, and mother and daughter were bridging a gap when there was no maid at all in the Salisbury kitchen.

"We ll, there was Libby,"the mother answered at length,"the colored girl I had when you were born. She really was perfect, in a way. She was a clean darky, and such a cook! Daddy talks still of her fried chicken and blueberry pies! And she loved company, too. But, you see, Grandma Salisbury was with us then, and she paid a little girl to look after you, so Libby had really nothing but the kitchen and dining-room to care for. Afterward, just before Fred came, she got lazy and ugly, and I had to let her go. Canadian Annie was a wonderful girl, too,"pursued Mrs. Salisbury,"but we only had her two months. Then she got a place where there were no children, and left on two days'notice. And when I think of the others!—the Hungarian girl who boiled two pairs of Fred's little brown socks and darkened the entire wash, sheets and napkins and all! And the colored girl who drank, and the girl who gave us boiled rice for dessert whenever I forgot to tell her anything else! And then Dad and I never will forget the woman who put pudding sauce on his mutton—dear me, dear me!"And Mrs. Salisbury laughed out at the memory."Between her not knowing one thing, and not understanding a word we said, she was pretty trying all around!"she presently added."And, of course, the instant you have them really trained they leave; and that's the end of that! One left me the day Stan was born, and another—and she was a nice girl, too—simply departed when you three were all down with scarlet fever, and left her bed unmade, and the tea cup and saucer from her breakfast on the end of the kitchen table! Luckily we had a wonderful nurse, and she simply took hold and saved the day."

"Isn't it a wonder that there isn't a training school for house servants?"Sandy had inquired, youthful interest in her eye.

"The re's no such thing,"her mother assured her positively,"as getting one who knows her business! And why? Why, because all the smart girls prefer to go into factories, and slave away for three or four dollars a week, instead of coming into good homes! Do Pearsall and Thompson ever have any difficulty in getting girls for the glove factory? Never! The re's a line of them waiting, a block long, every time they advertise. But you may make up your mind to it, dear, if you get a good cook, she's wasteful or she's lazy, or she's irritable, or dirty, or she won't wait on table, or she slips out at night, and laughs under street lamps with some man or other! She's always on your mind, and she's always an irritation."

"It just shows what a hopelessly stupid class you have to deal with, Mother,"the younger Sandy had said. But at eighteen, she was not so sure.

Alexandra frankly hated housework, and she did not know how to cook. She did not think it strange that it was hard to find a clever and well-trained young woman who would gladly spend all her time in housework and cooking for something less than three hundred dollars a year. Her eyes were beginning to be opened to the immense moral and social questions that lie behind the simple preference of American girls to work for men rather than for women. Household work was women's sphere, Sandy reasoned, and they had made it a sphere insufferable to other women. Something was wrong.

Sandy was too young, and too mentally independent, to enter very sympathetically into her mother's side of the matter. The younger woman's attitude was tinged with affectionate contempt, and when the stupidity of the maid, or the inconvenience of having no maid at all, interfered with the smooth current of her life, or her busy comings and goings, she became impatient and intolerant.

"Other people manage!"said Alexandra.

"Who, for instance?"demanded her mother, in calm exasperation.

"Oh, everyone—the Bernards, the Watermans! Doilies and finger bowls, and Elsie in a cap and apron!"

"But Doctor and Mrs. Bernard are old people, dear, and the Watermans are three business women—no lunch, no children, very little company!"

"We ll, Grace Elliot, then!"

"With two maids, Sandy. That's a very different matter!"

"And is there any reason why we shouldn't have two?"asked Sandy, with youthful logic.

"Ah, well, there you come to the question of expense, dear!"And Mrs. Salisbury dismissed the subject with a quiet air of triumph.

But of course the topic came up again. It is the one household ghost that is never laid in such a family. Sometimes Kane Salisbury himself took a part in it.

"Do you mean to tell me,"he once demanded, in the days of the dreadfully incompetent maids who preceded Lizzie,"that it is becoming practically impossible to get a good general servant?"

"We ll, I wish you'd try it yourself,"his wife answered, grimly quiet."It's just about wearing me out! I don't know what has become of the good old maid-of-all-work,"she presently pursued, with a sigh,"but she has simply vanished from the face of the earth. Even the greenest girls fresh from the other side begin to talk about having the washing put out, and to have extra help come in to wash windows and beat rugs! I don't know what we're coming to—you teach them to tell a blanket from a sheet, and how to boil coffee, and set a table, and then away they go to get more money somewhere. Dear me! Your father's mother used to have girls who had the wash on the line before eight o'clock—"

"Yes, but then Grandma's house was simpler,"Sandy contributed, a little doubtfully."You know, Grandma never put on any style, Mother—"

"Her house was always one of the most comfortable, most hospitable—"

"Yes, I know, Mother!"Alexandra persisted eagerly."But Fanny never had to answer the door, and Grandma used to let her leave the tablecloth on between meals—Grandma told me so herself!—and no fussing with doilies, or service plates under the soup plates, or glass saucers for dessert. And Grandma herself used to help wipe dishes, or sometimes set the table, and make the beds, if there was company—"

"That may be,"Mrs. Salisbury had the satisfaction of answering coldly."Perhaps she did, although I never remember hearing her say so. But my mother always had colored servants, and I never saw her so much as dust the piano!"

"I suppose we couldn't simplify things, Sally? Cut out some of the extra touches?"suggested the head of the house.

Mrs. Salisbury merely shook her head, compressing her lips firmly. It was quite difficult enough to keep things"nice,"with two growing boys in the family, without encountering such opposition as this. A day or two later she went into New Troy, the nearest big city, and came back triumphantly with Lizzie.

And at first Lizzie really did seem perfection. It was some weeks before Mrs. Salisbury realized that Lizzie was not truthful; absolutely reliable in money matters, yet Lizzie could not be believed in the simplest statement. Tasteless oatmeal, Lizzie glibly asseverated, had been well salted; weak coffee, or coffee as strong as brown paint, were the fault of the pot. Lizzie, rushing through dinner so that she might get out; Lizzie throwing out cold vegetables that"weren't worth saving"; Lizzie growing snappy and noisy at the first hint of criticism, somehow seemed worse sometimes than no servant at all.

"I wonder—if we moved into New Troy, Kane,"Mrs. Salisbury mused,"and got one of those wonderful modern apartments, with a gas stove, and a dumbwaiter, and hardwood floors, if Sandy and I couldn't manage everything? With a woman to clean and dinners downtown now and then, and a waitress in for occasions."