“You don’t get the idea, Auntie,” Sandy said blithely.  “Mother pays for efficiency.  Justine isn’t a mere extra pair of hands; she’s a trained professional worker.  She’s just like a stenographer, except that what she does is ten times harder to learn than stenography.  We can no more ask her to get tea than Dad could ask his head bookkeeper to—­well, to drop in here some Sunday and O.K.  Mother’s household accounts.  It’s an age of specialization, Aunt Martha.”

“It’s an age of utter nonsense,” Mrs. Otis said forcibly.  “But if your mother and father like to waste their money that way—­”

“There isn’t much waste of money to it,” Mrs. Salisbury put in neatly, “for Justine manages on less than I ever did.  I think there’s been only one week this fall when she hasn’t had a balance.”

“A balance of what?”

“A surplus, I mean.  A margin left from her allowance.”

The pink wool fell heavily into Mrs. Otis’s broad lap.  “She handles your money for you, does she, Sally?”

“Why, yes.  She seems eminently fitted for it.  And she does it for a third less, Mattie, truly.  She more than saves the difference in her wages.”

“You let her buy things and pay tradesmen, do you ?”

“Oh, Auntie, why not?” Alexandra asked, amused but impatient.  “Why shouldn’t Mother let her do that?”

“Well, it’s not my idea of good housekeeping, that’s all,” Mrs. Otis said staidly.  “Managing is the most important part of housekeeping.  In giving such a girl financial responsibilities, you not only let go of the control of your household, but you put temptation in her way.  No; let the girl try making some beds, and serving tea, now and then; and do your own marketing and paying, Sally.  It’s the only way.”

“Justine tempted—­why, she’s not that sort of girl at all!” Alexandra laughed gaily.

“Very well, my dear, perhaps she’s not, and perhaps you young girls know everything that is to be known about life,” her aunt answered witheringly.  “But when grown business men were cheated as easily as those men in the First National were,” she finished impressively, alluding to recent occurrences in River Falls, “it seems a little astonishing to find a girl your age so sure of her own judgment, that’s all.”

Sandy’s answer, if indirect, was effective.

“How about some tea?” she asked.  “Will you have some, either of you?  It only takes me a minute to get it.”

“And I wish you could have seen Mattie’s expression, Kane,” Mrs. Salisbury said to her husband when telling him of the conversation that evening, “really, she glared!  I suppose she really can’t understand how, with an expensive servant in the house—­” Mrs. Salisbury’s voice dropped a little on a note of mild amusement.  She sat idly at her dressing table, her hair loosened, her eyes thoughtful.  When she spoke again, it was with a shade of resentment.  “And, really, it is most inconvenient,” she said.  “I