attractiveness. Chart of suitable meals for children, from two years up. Table manners for children. Classic stories for children at bedtime. Flowers, their significance upon the table. Picnics—'"

"But, no; there's something beyond that," Owen said. Mrs. Salisbury turned a page.

"'Fourth Year. Post-graduate, not obligatory,'" she read. "'Unusual German, Italian, Russian and Spanish dishes. Translation of menus. Management of laundries, hotels and institutions. Work of a chef. Work of subordinate cooks. Ordinary poisons. Common dangers of canning. Canning for the market. Professional candy-making—'"

"Can you beat it!" said Owen.

"It's extraordinary!" Mrs. Salisbury conceded. Her husband asked the all-important question:

"What do you have to pay for one of these paragons?"

"It's all here," Mrs. Salisbury said. But she was distracted in her search of a scale of prices by the headlines of the various pages. "'Rules Governing Employers,'" she read, with amusement. "Isn't this too absurd? 'Employers of graduates of the A.S.D.S. will kindly respect the conditions upon which, and only upon which, contracts are based.'" She glanced down the long list of items. "'A comfortably furnished room,'" she read at random, "'weekly half holiday-access to nearest public library or family library—opportunity for hot bath at least twice weekly—two hours if possible for church attendance on Sunday—annual two weeks' holiday, or two holidays of one week each—full payment of salary in advance, on the first day of every month'—what a preposterous idea!" Mrs. Salisbury broke off to say. "How is one to know that she wouldn't skip off on the second?"

"In that case the school supplies you with another maid for the unfinished term," explained Sandy, from the booklet.

"Well—" the lady was still a little unsatisfied. "As if they didn't have privileges enough now!" she said. "It's the same old story: we are supposed to be pleasing them, not they us!"

"'In a family where no other maid is kept,'" read Alexandra, "'a graduate will take entire charge of kitchen and dining room, go to market if required, do ordinary family washing and ironing, will clean bathroom daily, and will clean and sweep every other room in the house, and the halls, once thoroughly every week. She will be on hand to answer the door only one afternoon every week, besides Sunday—'"

"What!" ejaculated Mrs. Salisbury.

"I should like to know who does it on other days!" Alexandra added amazedly.

"Don't you think that's ridiculous, Kane?" his wife asked eagerly.

"We-el," the man of the house said temperately, "I don't know that I do. You see, otherwise the girl has a string tied on her all the time. People in our position, after all, needn't assume that we're too good to open our own door—"

"That's exactly it, sir," Owen agreed eagerly; "Mother says that that's one of the things that have upset the whole system for so long! Just the convention that a lady can't open her own door—"

"But we haven't found the scale of wages yet—" Mrs. Salisbury interrupted sweetly but firmly. Alexandra, however, resumed the recital of the duties of one maid.

"'She will not be expected to assume the care of young children,'" she read, "nor to sleep in the room with them. She will not be expected to act as chaperone or escort at night. She—'"

"It DOESN'T say that, Sandy!"

"Oh, yes, it does! And, listen! 'NOTE. Employers are respectfully requested to maintain as formal an attitude as possible toward the maid. Any intimacy, or exchange of confidences, is especially to be avoided'"—Alexandra broke off to laugh, and her mother laughed with her, but indignantly.

"Insulting!" she said lightly. "Does anyone suppose for an instant that this is a serious experiment?"

"Come, that doesn't sound very ridiculous to me," her husband said. "Plenty of women do become confidential with their maids, don't they?"

"Dear me, how much you do know about women!" Alexandra said, kissing the top of her father's head. "Aren't you the bad old man!"

"No; but one might hope that an institution of this kind would put the American servant in her place," Mrs. Salisbury said seriously, "instead of flattering her and spoiling her beyond all reason. I take my maid's receipt for salary in advance; I show her the bathroom and the library—that's the idea, is it? Why, she might be a boarder! Next, they'll be asking for a place at the table and an hour's practice on the piano."

"Well, the original American servant, the 'neighbor's girl,' who came in to help during the haying season, and to put up the preserves, probably did have a place at the table," Mr. Salisbury submitted mildly.

"Mother thinks that America never will have a real servant class," Owen added uncertainly; "that is, until domestic service is elevated to the—the dignity of office work, don't you know? Until it attracts the nicer class of women, don't you know? Mother says that many a good man's fear of old age would be lightened, don't you know?—if he felt that, in case he lost his job, or died, his daughters could go into good homes, and grow up under the eye of good women, don't you know?"

"Very nice, Owen, but not very practical!" Mrs. Salisbury said, with her indulgent, motherly smile. "Oh, dear me, for the good old days of black servants, and plenty of them!" she sighed. For though Mrs. Salisbury had been born some years after the days of plenty known to her mother on her grandfather's plantation, before the war, she was accustomed to detailed recitals of its grandeurs.

"Here we are!" said Alexandra, finding a particular page that was boldly headed "Terms."

"'For a cook and general worker, no other help,'" she read, "'thirty dollars per month—'"

"Not so dreadful," her father said, pleasantly surprised.

"But, listen, Dad! Thirty dollars for a family of two, and an additional two dollars and a half monthly for each other member of the family. That would make ours thirty-seven dollars and a half, wouldn't it?" she computed swiftly.

"Awful! Impossible!" Mrs. Salisbury said instantly, almost in relief. The discussion made her vaguely uneasy. What did these casual amateurs know about the domestic problem, anyway? Kane, who was always anxious to avoid details; Sandy, all youthful enthusiasm and ignorance, and Owen Sargent, quoting his insufferable mother? For some moments she had been fighting an impulse to soothe them all with generalities. "Never mind; it's always been a problem, and it always will be! These new schemes are all very well, but don't trouble your dear heads about it any longer!"

Now she sank back, satisfied. The whole thing was but a mad, Utopian dream. Thirty-seven dollars indeed! "Why, one could get two good servants for that!" thought Mrs. Salisbury, with the same sublime faith with which she had told her husband, in poorer days, years ago, that, if they could but afford her, she knew they could get a "fine girl" for three dollars a week. The fact that the "fine girl" did not apparently exist did not at all shake Mrs. Salisbury's confidence that she could get two "good girls." Her hope in the untried solution rose with every failure.

"Thirty-seven is steep," said Kane Salisbury slowly. "However! What do we pay now, Mother?"

"Five a week," said that lady inflexibly.

"But we paid Germaine more," said Alexandra eagerly. "And didn't you pay Lizzie six and a half?"

"The last two months I did, yes," her mother agreed unwillingly. "But that comes only to twenty-six or seven," she added.

"But, look here," said Owen, reading. "Here it says: 'NOTE. Where a graduate is required to manage on a budget, it is computed that she saves the average family from two to seven dollars weekly on food and fuel bills.'"

"Now that begins to sound like horse sense," Mr. Salisbury began. But the mistress of the house merely smiled, and shook a dubious head, and the younger members of the family here created a diversion by