.

Justine was business-like.

"Seven dollars for two persons is the smallest sum we are allowed to
handle," she said promptly. "After that each additional person calls
for three dollars weekly in our minimum scale. Four or five dollars a
week per person, not including the maid, is the usual allowance."

"Mercy! Would that be twenty dollars for table alone?" the mistress
asked. "It is never that now, I think. Perhaps twice a week," she said,
turning to Alexandra, "your father gives me five dollars at the
breakfast table--"

"But, Mother, you telephone and charge at the market, and Lewis & Sons,
too, don't you?" Sandy asked.

"Well, yes, that's true. Yes, I suppose it comes to fully twenty-five
dollars a week, when you think of it. Yes, it probably comes to more.
But it never seems so much, somehow. Well, suppose we say twenty-five--"

"Twenty-five, I'll tell Dad." Alexandra confirmed it briskly.

"I used to keep accounts, years ago," Mrs. Salisbury said plaintively.
"Your father--" and again she turned to her daughter, as if to make
this revelation of her private affairs less distressing by so excluding
the stranger. "Your father has always been the most generous of men,"
she said; "he always gives me more money if I need it, and I try to do
the best I can." And a little annoyed, in her weakness and helplessness
by this business talk, she lay back on her pillow, and closed her eyes.

"Twenty-five a week, then!" Alexandra said, closing the talk by jumping
up from a seat on her mother's bed, and kissing the invalid's eyes in
parting. Justine, who had remained standing, followed her down to the
kitchen, where, with cheering promptitude, the new maid fell upon
preparations for dinner. Alexandra rather bashfully suggested what she
had vaguely planned for dinner; Justine nodded intelligently at each
item; presently Alexandra left her, busily making butter-balls, and
went upstairs to report.

"Nothing sensational about her," said Sandy to her mother, "but she
takes hold! She's got some bleaching preparation of soda or something
drying on the sink-board; she took the shelf out of the icebox the
instant she opened it, and began to scour it while she talked. She's
got a big blue apron on, and she's hung a nice clean white one on the
pantry door."

There was nothing sensational about the tray which Justine carried up
to the sick room that evening--nothing sensational in the dinner which
was served to the diminished fam