“Here we are!” said Alexandra, finding a particular page that was boldly headed “Terms.”

“‘For a cook and general worker, no other help,’ she read, “’thirty dollars per month—­’”

“Not so dreadful,” her father said, pleasantly surprised.

“But, listen, Dad!  Thirty dollars for a family of two, and an additional two dollars and a half monthly for each other member of the family.  That would make ours thirty-seven dollars and a half, wouldn’t it?” she computed swiftly.

“Awful!  Impossible!” Mrs. Salisbury said instantly, almost in relief.  The discussion made her vaguely uneasy.  What did these casual amateurs know about the domestic problem, anyway?  Kane, who was always anxious to avoid details; Sandy, all youthful enthusiasm and ignorance, and Owen Sargent, quoting his insufferable mother?  For some moments she had been fighting an impulse to soothe them all with generalities.  “Never mind; it’s always been a problem, and it always will be!  These new schemes are all very well, but don’t trouble your dear heads about it any longer!”

Now she sank back, satisfied.  The whole thing was but a mad, Utopian dream.  Thirty-seven dollars indeed!  “Why, one could get two good servants for that!” thought Mrs. Salisbury, with the same sublime faith with which she had told her husband, in poorer days, years ago, that, if they could but afford her, she knew they could get a “fine girl” for three dollars a week.  The fact that the “fine girl” did not apparently exist did not at all shake Mrs. Salisbury’s confidence that she could get two “good girls.”  Her hope in the untried solution rose with every failure.

“Thirty-seven is steep,” said Kane Salisbury slowly.  “However!  What do we pay now, Mother?”

“Five a week,” said that lady inflexibly.

“But we paid Germaine more,” said Alexandra eagerly.  “And didn’t you pay Lizzie six and a half?”

“The last two months I did, yes,” her mother agreed unwillingly.  “But that comes only to twenty-six or seven,” she added.

“But, look here,” said Owen, reading.  “Here it says:  ’Note.  Where a graduate is required to manage on a budget, it is computed that she saves the average family from two to seven dollars weekly on food and fuel bills.’”

“Now that begins to sound like horse sense,” Mr. Salisbury began.  But the mistress of the house merely smiled, and shook a dubious head, and the younger members of the family here created a diversion by reminding their sister’s guest, with animation, that he had half-asked them to go out for a short ride in his car.  Alexandra accordingly ran for a veil, and the young quartette departed with much noise, Owen stuffing his pamphlets and booklet into his pocket before he went.

Mr. and Mrs. Salisbury settled down contentedly to double Canfield, the woman crushing out the last flicker of the late topic with a placid shake of the head, when the man asked her for her honest opinion of the American School of Domestic Science.  “I don’t truly think it’s at all practical, dear,” said Mrs. Salisbury regretfully.  “But we might watch it for a year or two and go into the question again some time, if you like.  Especially if some one else has tried one of these maids, and we have had a chance to see how it goes!”