“No.  Her—­her work is done.  She—­comes and goes that way.”

“Without saying a word?  And who answers the door?” Mrs. Otis was unaffectedly astonished now.

“She does if she’s in the house, Mattie, just as she answers the telephone.  But she’s only actually on duty one afternoon a week.”

“You see, the theory is, Auntie,” Sandy supplied, “that persons on our income—­I won’t say of our position, for Mother hates that—­but on our income, aren’t supposed to require formal door-answering very often.”

Mrs. Otis, her knitting suspended, moved her round eyes from mother to daughter and back again.  She did not say a word, but words were not needed.

“I know it seems outrageous, in some ways, Mattie,” Mrs. Salisbury presently said, with a little nervous laugh.  “But what is one to do?”

“Do?” echoed her sister roundly.  “Do?  Well, I know I keep six house servants, and have always kept at least three, and I never heard the equal of this in all my days!  Do?—­I’d show you what I’d do fast enough!  Do you suppose I’d pay a maid thirty-seven dollars a month to go tramping off to the library in the rain, and to tell me what my social status was?  Why, Evelyn keeps two, and pays one eighteen and one fifteen, and do you suppose she’d allow either such liberties?  Not at all.  The downstairs girl wears a nice little cap and apron—­’Madam, dinner is served,’ she says—­”

“Yes, but Evelyn’s had seven cooks since she was married,” Sandy, who was not a great admirer of her young married cousin, put in here, “and Arthur said that she actually cried because she could not give a decent dinner!”

“Evelyn’s only a beginner, dear,” said Evelyn’s mother sharply, “but she has the right spirit.  No nonsense, regular holidays, and hard work when they are working is the only way to impress maids.  Mary Underwood,” she went on, turning to her sister, “says that, when she and Fred are to be away for a meal, she deliberately lays out extra work for the maid; she says it keeps her from getting ideas.  No, Sally,” Mrs. Otis concluded, with the older-sister manner she had worn years ago, “no, dear; you are all wrong about this, and sooner or later this girl will simply walk over you, and you’ll see it as I do.  Changing her book at the library, indeed!  How did she know that you mightn’t want tea served this afternoon?”

“She wouldn’t serve it, if we did, Aunt Martha,” Sandy said, dimpling.  “She never serves tea!  That’s one of the regulations.”

“Well, we simply won’t discuss it,” Mrs. Otis said, firm lines forming themselves at the corners of her capable mouth.  “If you like that sort of thing, you like it, that’s all!  I don’t.  We’ll talk of something else.”

But she could not talk of anything else.  Presently she burst out afresh.

“Dear me, when I think of the way Ma used to manage ’em!  No nonsense there; it was walk a chalk line in Ma’s house!  Your grandmother,” she said to Alexandra, with stern relish, “had had a pack of slaves about her in her young days.  But, of course, Sally,” she added charitably, “you’ve been ill, and things do have to run themselves when one’s ill—­”