Mrs. Ruston took a considerably longer interval to digest this reply.  “Then you’re meaning to give the girl her notice at once, madam?” she asked.

“I’m not going to give her notice at all,” said Rose.  “I’m going to find her another place.  I shan’t have any trouble about it though.  As you say, she’s a very good nurse-maid, and she’s a pleasant sort of a human being besides.  But as soon as I can find her another place, I’m going to take over her work.”

To this last observation it became evident that Mrs. Ruston meant to make no reply at all.  She gave Rose some statistical information about the twins instead, in which Rose showed herself politely interested and presently withdrew.

It soon appeared, however, that though Mrs. Ruston might be slow and sparing of speech, she was capable of acting with a positively Napoleonic dash.  Rodney wore a queer expression all through dinner, and when he got Rose alone in the library afterward, he explained it.  Mrs. Ruston had made her two-hour constitutional that afternoon into an opportunity for calling on him at his office.  She had given him notice, contingently.  She made it an inviolable rule of conduct, it appeared, never to undertake the care of two infants without the assistance of a nurse-maid.  She was a conscientious person and she felt she couldn’t do justice to her work on any other basis.  Rose had informed her of her intention to dispense with the services of the nurse-maid, without engaging any one else to take her place.  If Rose adhered to this intention, Mrs. Ruston must leave.

It was some sort of absurd misunderstanding, of course, Rodney concluded and wanted to know what it was all about.

“I did say I meant to let Doris go,” Rose explained, “but I told her I meant to take Doris’ job myself.  I said I thought I could be just as good a nurse-maid as she was.  I said I’d boil bottles and wash clothes and take Mrs. Ruston’s orders exactly as if I were being paid six dollars a week and board for doing it.  And I meant it just as literally as I said it.”

He was prowling about the room in a worried sort of way, before she got as far as that.

“I don’t see, child,” he exclaimed, “why you couldn’t leave well enough alone!  If it’s that old economy bug of yours again, it’s nonsense.  You’d save, including board, about ten dollars a week.  And it would work out one of two ways:  If you didn’t do all the maid’s work.  Mrs. Ruston would have a real grievance.  She’s right about needing all the help she gets.  If you did do it, it would mean that you’d work yourself sick.—­Oh, I know what the doctor said, but that’s all rot, and he knew it.  You had him hypnotized.  You’d have to give up everything for it—­all your social duties, all our larks together.  Oh, it’s absurd!  You, to spend all your time doing menial work—­scrubbing and washing bottles, to save me ten dollars a week!”

“It isn’t menial work,” Rose insisted.  “It’s—­apprentice work.  After I’ve been at it six months, learning as fast as I can, I’ll be able to let Mrs. Ruston go and take her job.  I’ll be really competent to take care of my own children.  I don’t pretend I am now.”