By this time we had arrived at the library, where a bright fire was burning in the grate.  It was a fine big room, with dark oak furnishings and books in cases along one wall, but this morning it had a dishevelled and untidy look.  On a little table at one side of the fireplace were the remains of a breakfast; at the other a number of wraps were thrown carelessly upon a chair.  As I came in Mrs. Starkweather rose from her place, drawing a silk scarf around her shoulders.  She is a robust, rather handsome woman, with many rings on her fingers, and a pair of glasses hanging to a little gold hook on her ample bosom; but this morning she, too, looked worried and old.

“Oh, yes,” she said with a rueful laugh, “we’re beginning a merry Christmas, as you see.  Think of Christmas with no cook in the house!”

I felt as if I had discovered a gold mine.  Poor starving millionaires!

But Mrs. Starkweather had not told the whole of her sorrowful story.

“We had a company of friends invited for dinner to-day,” she said, “and our cook was ill—­or said she was—­and had to go.  One of the maids went with her.  The man who looks after the furnace disappeared on Friday, and the stableman has been drinking.  We can’t very well leave the place without some one who is responsible in charge of it—­and so here we are.  Merry Christmas!”

I couldn’t help laughing.  Poor people!

“You might,” I said, “apply for Mrs. Heney’s place.”

“Who is Mrs. Heney?” asked Mrs. Starkweather.

“You don’t mean to say that you never heard of Mrs. Heney!” I exclaimed.  “Mrs. Heney, who is now Mrs.  ‘Penny’ Daniels?  You’ve missed one of our greatest celebrities.”

With that, of course, I had to tell them about Mrs. Heney, who has for years performed a most important function in this community.  Alone and unaided she has been the poor whom we are supposed to have always with us.  If it had not been for the devoted faithfulness of Mrs. Heney at Thanksgiving, Christmas and other times of the year, I suppose our Woman’s Aid Society and the King’s Daughters would have perished miserably of undistributed turkeys and tufted comforters.  For years Mrs. Heney filled the place most acceptably.  Curbing the natural outpourings of a rather jovial soul she could upon occasion look as deserving of charity as any person that ever I met.  But I pitied the little Heneys:  it always comes hard on the children.  For weeks after every Thanksgiving and Christmas they always wore a painfully stuffed and suffocated look.  I only came to appreciate fully what a self-sacrificing public servant Mrs. Heney really was when I learned that she had taken the desperate alternative of marrying “Penny” Daniels.

“So you think we might possibly aspire to the position?” laughed Mrs. Starkweather.

Upon this I told them of the trouble in our household and asked them to come down and help us enjoy Dr. McAlway and the goose.