“You would get the bill at the end of the month,” Mrs. Salisbury said, displeased.

“Yes, but I don’t run bills,” the girl persisted.

“I don’t care to discuss it, Justine,” the mistress said pleasantly; “just do as I ask you, if you please, and we’ll settle everything at the end of the month.  You shall not be held responsible, I assure you.”

She went out of the kitchen, and the next morning had a pleasant half hour in the big grocery, and left a large order.

“Just a little kitchen misunderstanding,” she told the affable Mr. Lewis, “but when one is ill—­However, I am rapidly getting the reins back into my own hands now.”

After that, Mrs. Salisbury ordered in person, or by telephone, every day, and Justine’s responsibilities were confined to the meat market and greengrocer.  Everything went along very smoothly until the end of the month, when Justine submitted her usual weekly account and a bill from Lewis & Sons which was some three times larger in amount than was the margin of money supposed to pay it.

This was annoying.  Mrs. Salisbury could not very well rebuke her, nor could she pay the bill out of her own purse.  She determined to put it aside until her husband seemed in a mood for financial advances, and, wrapping it firmly about the inadequate notes and silver given her by Justine, she shut it in a desk drawer.  There the bill remained, although the money was taken out for one thing or another; change that must be made, a small bill that must be paid at the door.

Another fortnight went by, and Lewis & Sons submitted another bimonthly bill.  Justine also gave her mistress another inadequate sum, what was left from her week’s expenditures.

The two grocery bills were for rather a formidable sum.  The thought of them, in their desk drawer, rather worried Mrs. Salisbury.  One evening she bravely told her husband about them, and laid them before him.

Mr. Salisbury was annoyed.  He had been free from these petty worries for some months, and he disliked their introduction again.

“I thought this was Justine’s business, Sally?” said he, frowning over his eyeglasses.

“Well, it is” said his wife, “but she hasn’t enough money, apparently, and she simply handed me these, without saying anything.”

“Well, but that doesn’t sound like her.  Why?”

“Oh, because I do the ordering, she says.  They’re queer, you know, Kane; all servants are.  And she seems very touchy about it.”

“Nonsense!” said the head of the house roundly.  “Oh, Justine!” he shouted, and the maid, after putting an inquiring head in from the dining-room, duly came in, and stood before him.

“What’s struck your budget that you were so proud of, Justine?” asked Kane Salisbury.  “It looks pretty sick.”

“I am not keeping on a budget now,” answered Justine, with a rather surprised glance at her mistress.