A MAID AND MODEL

The chiming of the clock an hour after Dicky had gone to the studio after our little noon dinner next day warned me that I was not dressed and that the cooks whose advertisements I had answered might call at any minute.  I dressed and arranged my hair.  Just as I put in the last hairpin the bell rang.

Two women, covertly eyeing each other with suspicion, stood in the hallway when I opened the door.  To my invitation to come in each responded “Thank you,” and the entrance of both was quiet.  When they sat down in the chairs I drew forward for them I mentally appraised them for a moment.

One was a middle-aged woman of the strongly marked German type.  Clean, trig, grim, she spelled efficiency in every line of her body.  The other, a tall Polish girl, of perhaps 22, was also extremely neat, but her pretty brown hair was blown around her face and her blue eyes were fairly dancing with eagerness, in contrast to the stolid expression of the other woman.  As I faced them, the older woman compressed her lips in a thin line, while the girl smiled at me in friendly fashion.

“You came in answer to the advertisements?” I queried.

The older woman silently held forth my letter and two or three other papers pinned together.  I saw that they were references written in varying feminine chirography.  Her silence was almost uncanny.

“Oh, yes, Misses,” the Polish girl exclaimed.  “I put my—­what do you call it?  My—­”

“Advertisement,” I suggested, smiling.  Her good-nature was infectious.

“Oh, yes, ad-ver-tise-ment, in the paper, Sunday.  Today your letter came, the first letter.  I guess hard times now.  Nobody wants maids.  I come right queeck.  I can do good work, very good.  I have good references.  You got maid yet?”

“Not yet,” I answered, and turned to the other woman.

According to all my theories and my training I should have chosen the older woman.  Efficiency always has been an idol of mine.  It was my slogan in my profession.  It is my humiliation that I seem to have none of it in my housework.  The German woman evidently was capable of administering my household much better than I could do it.  Perhaps it was because of this very reason that I found myself repelled by her, and subtly drawn by the younger woman’s smiling enthusiasm.

“Have you much company, and does your husband bring home friends without notice?” The older woman’s harsh tones broke in.

The questions turned the scale.  From the standpoint of strict justice, the standard from which I always had tried to reason, she was perfectly justified in asking the questions before she took the place.  But intuition told me that our home life would be a dreary thing with this martinet in the kitchen.

“That will not trouble you,” I said, “for I do not believe I wish your services.  Here is your car fare, and thank you for coming.”