Jimmy groaned at the foot of the stairs, but Anne Brown was getting over her tears and now she turned on me in a temper.

“It’s all your fault,” she said.  “I was going to stay at home and get a little sleep—­”

“Well, you can sleep now,” Dallas broke in.  “There’ll be nothing to do but sleep.”

“I think you haven’t grasped the situation, Dal,” I said icily.  “There will be plenty to do.  There isn’t a servant in the house!”

“No servants!” everybody cried at once.  The Mercer girls stopped giggling.

“Holy cats!” Max stopped in the act of hanging up his overcoat.  “Do you mean—­why, I can’t shave myself!  I’ll cut my head off.”

“You’ll do more than that,” I retorted grimly.  “You will carry coal and tend fires and empty ash pans, and when you are not doing any of those things there will be pots and pans to wash and beds to make.”

Then there was a row.  We had worked back to the den now, and I stood in front of the fireplace and let the storm beat around me, and tried to look perfectly cold and indifferent, and not to see Mr. Harbison’s shocked face.  No wonder he thought them a lot of savages, browbeating their hostess the way they did.

“It’s a fool thing anyhow,” Max Reed wound up, “to celebrate the anniversary of a divorce—­especially—­” Here he caught Jim’s eye and stopped.  But I had suddenly remembered.  Bella down in the basement!

Could anything have been worse?  And of course she would have hysteria and then turn on me and blame me for it all.  It all came over me at once and overwhelmed me, while Anne was crying and saying she wouldn’t cook if she starved for it, and Aunt Selina was taking off her wraps.  I felt queer all over, and I sat down suddenly.  Mr. Harbison was looking at me, and he brought me a glass of wine.

“It won’t be so bad as you fear,” he said comfortingly.  “There will be no danger once we are vaccinated, and many hands make light work.  They are pretty raw now, because the thing is new to them, but by morning they will be reconciled.”

“It isn’t the work; it is something entirely different,” I said.  And it was.  Bella and work could hardly be spoken in the same breath.

If I had only turned her out as she deserved to be, when she first came, instead of allowing her to carry through the wretched farce about seeing Takahiro!  Or if I had only run to the basement the moment the house was quarantined, and got her out the areaway or the coal hole!  And now time was flying, and Aunt Selina had me by the arm, and any moment I expected Bella to pounce on us through the doorway and the whole situation to explode with a bang.

It was after eleven before they were rational enough to discuss ways and means, and, of course, the first thing suggested was that we all adjourn below stairs and clean up after dinner.  I could have slain Max Reed for the notion, and the Mercer girls for taking him up.