Sandy was too young, and too mentally independent, to enter very sympathetically into her mother’s side of the matter.  The younger woman’s attitude was tinged with affectionate contempt, and when the stupidity of the maid, or the inconvenience of having no maid at all, interfered with the smooth current of her life, or her busy comings and goings, she became impatient and intolerant.

“Other people manage!” said Alexandra.

“Who, for instance?” demanded her mother, in calm exasperation.

“Oh, everyone—­the Bernards, the Watermans!  Doilies and finger bowls, and Elsie in a cap and apron!”

“But Doctor and Mrs. Bernard are old people, dear, and the Watermans are three business women—­no lunch, no children, very little company!”

“Well, Grace Elliot, then!”

“With two maids, Sandy.  That’s a very different matter!”

“And is there any reason why we shouldn’t have two?” asked Sandy, with youthful logic.

“Ah, well, there you come to the question of expense, dear!” And Mrs. Salisbury dismissed the subject with a quiet air of triumph.

But of course the topic came up again.  It is the one household ghost that is never laid in such a family.  Sometimes Kane Salisbury himself took a part in it.

“Do you mean to tell me,” he once demanded, in the days of the dreadfully incompetent maids who preceded Lizzie, “that it is becoming practically impossible to get a good general servant?”

“Well, I wish you’d try it yourself,” his wife answered, grimly quiet.  “It’s just about wearing me out!  I don’t know what has become of the good old maid-of-all-work,” she presently pursued, with a sigh, “but she has simply vanished from the face of the earth.  Even the greenest girls fresh from the other side begin to talk about having the washing put out, and to have extra help come in to wash windows and beat rugs!  I don’t know what we’re coming to—­you teach them to tell a blanket from a sheet, and how to boil coffee, and set a table, and then away they go to get more money somewhere.  Dear me!  Your father’s mother used to have girls who had the wash on the line before eight o’clock—­”

“Yes, but then Grandma’s house was simpler,” Sandy contributed, a little doubtfully.  “You know, Grandma never put on any style, Mother—­”

“Her house was always one of the most comfortable, most hospitable—­ "

“Yes, I know, Mother!” Alexandra persisted eagerly.  “But Fanny never had to answer the door, and Grandma used to let her leave the tablecloth on between meals—­Grandma told me so herself!—­and no fussing with doilies, or service plates under the soup plates, or glass saucers for dessert.  And Grandma herself used to help wipe dishes, or sometimes set the table, and make the beds, if there was company—­”

“That may be,” Mrs. Salisbury had the satisfaction of answering coldly.  “Perhaps she did, although I never remember hearing her say so.  But my mother always had colored servants, and I never saw her so much as dust the piano!”