“I suppose we couldn’t simplify things, Sally?  Cut out some of the extra touches?” suggested the head of the house.

Mrs. Salisbury merely shook her head, compressing her lips firmly.  It was quite difficult enough to keep things “nice,” with two growing boys in the family, without encountering such opposition as this.  A day or two later she went into New Troy, the nearest big city, and came back triumphantly with Lizzie.

And at first Lizzie really did seem perfection.  It was some weeks before Mrs. Salisbury realized that Lizzie was not truthful; absolutely reliable in money matters, yet Lizzie could not be believed in the simplest statement.  Tasteless oatmeal, Lizzie glibly asseverated, had been well salted; weak coffee, or coffee as strong as brown paint, were the fault of the pot.  Lizzie, rushing through dinner so that she might get out; Lizzie throwing out cold vegetables that “weren’t worth saving”; Lizzie growing snappy and noisy at the first hint of criticism, somehow seemed worse sometimes than no servant at all.

“I wonder—­if we moved into New Troy, Kane,” Mrs. Salisbury mused, “and got one of those wonderful modern apartments, with a gas stove, and a dumbwaiter, and hardwood floors, if Sandy and I couldn’t manage everything?  With a woman to clean and dinners downtown now and then, and a waitress in for occasions.”

“And me jumping up to change the salad plates, Mother!” Alexandra put in briskly.  “And a pile of dishes to do every night!”

“Gosh, let’s not move into the city—­” protested Stanford.  “No tennis, no canoe, no baseball!”

“And we know everyone in River Falls, we’d have to keep coming out here for parties!” Sandy added.

“Well,” Mrs. Salisbury sighed, “I admit that it is too much of a problem for me!” she said.  “I know that I married your father on twenty dollars a week,” she told the children severely, “and we lived in a dear little cottage, only eighteen dollars a month, and I did all my own work!  And never in our lives have we lived so well.  But the minute you get inexperienced help, your bills simply double, and inexperienced help means simply one annoyance after another.  I give it up!”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Mother,” Alexandra offered innocently; “perhaps we don’t systematize enough ourselves.  It ought to be all so well arranged and regulated that a girl would know what she was expected to do, and know that you had a perfect right to call her down for wasting or slighting things.  Why couldn’t women—­a bunch of women, say—­”

“Why couldn’t they form a set of household rules and regulations?” her mother intercepted smoothly.  “Because—­it’s just one of the things that you young, inexperienced people can talk very easily about,” she interrupted herself to say with feeling, “but it never seems to occur to any one of you that every household has its different demands and regulations.  The market fluctuates, the size of a family changes—­fixed laws are impossible!  No.  Lizzie is no worse than lots of others, better than the average.  I shall hold on to her!”