Or perhaps, unpacking her market basket by the spotless kitchen table, she would confide innocently: 

“Samuels is really having an extraordinary sale of serges this morning.  I went in, and got two dress lengths for my sister’s children.  If I can find a good dressmaker, I really believe I’ll have one myself.  I think”—­Justine would eye her vegetables thoughtfully—­“I think I’ll go up now and have my bath, and cook these later.”

Mrs. Salisbury could reasonably find no fault with this.  But an indescribable irritation possessed her whenever such a conversation took place.  The coolness!—­she would say to herself, as she went upstairs—­wandering about to shops and greenhouses, and quietly deciding to take a bath before luncheon!  Why, Mrs. Salisbury had had maids who never once asked for the use of the bathroom, although they had been for months in her employ.

No, she could not attack Justine on this score.  But she began to entertain the girl with enthusiastic accounts of the domestics of earlier and better days.

“My mother had a girl,” she said, “a girl named Norah O’Connor.  I remember her very well.  She swept, she cleaned, she did the entire washing for a family of eight, and she did all the cooking.  And such cookies, and pies, and gingerbread as she made!  All for sixteen dollars a month.  We regarded Norah as a member of the family, and, even on her holidays she would take three or four of us, and walk with us to my father’s grave; that was all she wanted to do.  You don’t see her like in these days, dear old Norah!”

Justine listened respectfully, silently.  Once, when her mistress was enlarging upon the advantages of slavery, the girl commented mildly: 

“Doesn’t it seem a pity that the women of the United States didn’t attempt at least to train all those Southern colored people for house servants?  It seems to be their natural element.  They love to live in white families, and they have no caste pride.  It would seem to be such a waste of good material, letting them worry along without much guidance all these years.  It almost seems as if the Union owed it to them.”

“Dear me, I wish somebody would!  I, for one, would love to have dear old mammies around me again,” Mrs. Salisbury said, with fervor.  “They know their place,” she added neatly.

“The men could be butlers and gardeners and coachmen,” pursued Justine.

“Yes, and with a lot of finely trained colored women in the market, where would you girls from the college be?” the other woman asked, not without a spice of mischievous enjoyment.

“We would be a finer type of servant, for more fastidious people,” Justine scored by answering soberly.  “You could hardly expect a colored girl to take the responsibility of much actual managing, I should suppose.  There would always be a certain proportion of people who would prefer white servants.”