“He’s hopelessly old-fashioned!” murmured Arthur to his sister.

“Yes, but such a dear,” murmured Adelaide.

“No wonder you say that!” was his retort.  “You wind him round your finger.”

In the sitting room—­the “back parlor”—­Mrs. Ranger descended upon them from the direction of the kitchen.  Ellen was dressed for work; her old gingham, for all its neatness, was in as sharp contrast to her daughter’s garb of the lady of leisure as were Hiram’s mill clothes to his son’s “London latest.”  “It’s almost half-past twelve,” she said.  “Dinner’s been ready more than half an hour.  Mary’s furious, and it’s hard enough to keep servants in this town since the canning factories started.”

Adelaide and Arthur laughed; Hiram smiled.  They were all thoroughly familiar with that canning-factory theme.  It constituted the chief feature of the servant problem in Saint X, as everybody called St. Christopher; and the servant problem there, as everywhere else, was the chief feature of domestic economy.  As Mrs. Ranger’s mind was concentrated upon her household, the canning factories were under fire from her early and late, in season and out of season.

“And she’s got to wait on the table, too,” continued Ellen, too interested in reviewing her troubles to mind the amusement of the rest of the family.

“Why, where’s the new girl Jarvis brought you?” asked Hiram.

“She came from way back in the country, and, when she set the table, she fixed five places.  ‘There’s only four of us, Barbara,’ said I.  ’Yes, Mrs. Ranger,’ says she, ‘four and me.’  ’But how’re you going to wait on the table and sit with us?’ says I, very kindly, for I step mighty soft with those people.  ‘Oh, I don’t mind bouncin’ up and down,’ says she; ’I can chew as I walk round.’  When I explained, she up and left in a huff.  ‘I’m as good as you are, Mrs. Ranger, I’d have you know,’ she said, as she was going, just to set Mary afire; ’my father’s an independent farmer, and I don’t have to live out.  I just thought I’d like to visit in town, and I’d heard your folks well spoke of.  I’ll get a place in the canning factory!’ I wasn’t sorry to have her go.  You ought to have seen the way she set the table!”

“We’ll have to get servants from the East,” said Arthur.  “They know their place a little better there.  We can get some English that have just come over.  They’re the best—­thoroughly respectful.”

He did not see the glance his father shot at him from under his heavy eyebrows.  But Adelaide did—­she was expecting it.  “Don’t talk like a cad, Artie!” she said.  “You know you don’t think that way.”

“Oh, of course, I don’t admire that spirit—­or lack of it,” he replied.  “But—­what are you going to do?  It’s the flunkies or the Barbaras and Marys—­or doing our own work.”

To Hiram Ranger that seemed unanswerable, and his resentment against his son for expressing ideas for which he had utter contempt seemed unreasonable.  Again reason put him in the wrong, though instinct was insisting that he was in the right.