east, and forthwith to commence another day without pausing for the customary night-interval.

It was, therefore, according to Daisy's dial, about six-thirty in the morning instead of that hour p.m., when the jitney, doubling adroitly between two great gate-posts of gray masonry, spun along a paved driveway and pulled up before a house so big and ornamental and ostentatious that it filled Daisy with a kind of momentary awe just to look at it.

This structure would have filled an architect with awe, too, though not the same kind. Looking at the house upon which Sir Thomas Harrison had set the imprimatur of his taste and his predilections, the architect would, if he were a psychologist, have said that Sir Thomas had once been plain—very plain—Tom. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved the chief seats in synagogues. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved to push and shove and crowd, and believed in the survival of the fittest—the fittest, that is to say, according to Sir Tom's standard. He would have said that Sir Thomas gave liberally to charities, for three reasons—for display, for business reasons, and to parade his dollars before the needy. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved advertisement, and paid high rates to have his "write-up" in "special supplements". He would have said that Sir Thomas, in regard to the policies or sentiments of the day, might always be found on the band-wagon—not because he always understood these policies and sentiments, but because the crowd clapped for 'em.

The architect would have said, further, that if he had had a sister and if she had been a pretty and irresolute girl and had chosen—we will say for the sake of present illustration—to go, as the sylph of the Imperial Hotel phrased it, "into service", he would have preferred to have her work almost anywhere else in town than at the house of Sir Thomas Harrison. This in spite of the deference and ostentatious politeness Sir Thomas—at state receptions and so forth, where he was well-watched—used toward the awkward and reticent woman he had married before he made his money—or rather, before the natural growth of the country made his money for him.

The architect might also have premised, from the heavily-built and solid cement bridge that was Sir Thomas Harrison's plan for bringing a rather pretty ravine up to the level of his driveway, as well as from a huge concrete garage and other indications of a superfluity of stone and mortar, that Sir Tom was a contractor and that the "Sir" end of his name—if it had not come by the political route, that is to say—had come through connection with the building of some railroad or government building or other public work by which, it had happened, the country had benefited while itself benefiting Sir Thomas Harrison.

Upon house and grounds, in short, was set the seal of dollars. Every dollar that would show. "Have more dollars than the next man, and let him know you have 'em," was Sir Thomas' social creed.

The chauffeur half-turned his head, and opened the door of the tonneau. Eye-corner and mouth-corner twinkled. Daisy jumped actively out, "telescope" grip in hand.

"Thank you", she said, and turned to go. In the country, one does not pay for a "lift" on one's way.

"One dollar, lady," came the voice of her driver. Daisy faced about. The features, as a whole, of the chauffeur held only polite formality; but eye-corner and mouth-corner still twinkled and twitched.

"What's that?" she said.

"Your fare—one dollar."

"Oh!" Daisy's hand went to the bosom of her blouse, slipped in—and was presently withdrawn, somewhat blankly. She had left the purse on the dresser at the hotel. No use going back now. A little shrug dismissed the matter. That was Daisy's way with vicissitudes.

"Nothin' doin', huh?" the chauffeur's voice was humorously sharp, "Well, don't start makin' excuses. It won't," the young man glanced up at the mighty and singular front of the Harrison house, "it won't be hard to find you, as long as you're at this place. I'll come back for it."

Daisy dimpled and turned off again.

"Say," commented the taxi-driver, "you better not go in th' front door." Daisy was walking straight up to the front steps.

"Excuse me for buttin' in," her adviser continued, "but the front door is only for the people that lives here, or their dolled-up guests. I'm only tellin' you for your own good. If you was to go up there and ring the front door bell, like you was headed to do, they'd know you was a green hand, see, and most likely you wouldn't get the job you're after."

Daisy hadn't told her conductor she was after any job. He seemed to have a way of knowing things. She put up her chin a little, and did not look back, but thought it best to follow his advice. Without waiting to see whether she took it or not, he spun away down the other arm of the horseshoe-shaped drive, on his return to the street.

Passing down a walk at the side of the house, Daisy saw a girl looking out through a latticed gate. Evidently the sylph had phoned her housemaid friend to be "on the lookout".

"I thort you were never a-comin', I did," said the housemaid, who was a thin, white, dissatisfied figure, with a larynx almost as prominent as the "Adam's-apple" of a lean man. Alice was one who had worn herself out with the effort, first to avoid doing any more than the barely necessary, and second, to do this as perfunctorily as she could—which was very perfunctorily. Daisy had expected, somehow, to find her just as she was—that is to say, homelier than the skittish sylph, because otherwise she could not have been a friend of the latter.

Brisking up to the girl, diplomatically sociable, Daisy said: "I came as soon's I could. It's a long way."

"Come in," said Alice, in her querulous voice. Daisy followed the present incumbent of the position that was to be hers, into the Harrison kitchen.

If it had not been furnished forth with such equipment as stamped it undeniably for what it was, Daisy, not having seen the other rooms in the house and judging the room she saw by the simple standards of the farmhouses that were her only available criterion, would have taken it for the living-room. She would not, she felt, have minded living in it. It was great and clean and shining.

Alice, however, did not linger in the kitchen, which was not her domain but that of a tall damsel, whose tawny hair, long nose, long line of cheek, and lower lip pushed slightly outward by the pressure of strong white upper teeth, said "Edinbory" as plain as features could talk.

"Is yon the new chambermaid, Allie?" she enquired, stirring cake-batter with a powerful, brisk movement.

"Yes, yes," responded Alice, impatiently, "don't keep us now, Jean. I shall 'ave to be smart, you know, to have my things packed when 'E gets here." "'E" was Alice's "company", who worked for a transfer firm and had promised to "nip around and shift her luggage" for her.

"Come awa doon an' have a bit crack, then, when ye can," said Jean, clearing her batter off the spoon by impacting the utensil cautiously against the edge of the bowl which contained the mixture. "We'll hae a canny morsel cake, an' a sup o' tea forbye", she added, as a clincher. "You'll come too, Allie."

Daisy, who scented future advantage in an alliance with the hospitable Scotch cook, smiled back her assent as she passed on through a door at the further end of the kitchen. This gave to a stair carpeted neatly and leading up to a room with two beds in it. The furniture was expensive, but well-worn—evidently moved back to the servants' quarters to make room for the latest