you
that Eliza has been here half the time, and that muffins and date puffs,
however delicious, aren't all there is to running a big house like this.
Besides, just be sensible, Billy," he went on more seriously, as he
noted the rebellious gleam coming into his young wife's eyes; "you'd
know you couldn't do it, if you'd just stop to think. There's the
Carletons coming to dinner Monday, and my studio Tea to-morrow, to
say nothing of the Symphony and the opera, and the concerts you'd lose
because you were too dead tired to go to them. You know how it was with
that concert yesterday afternoon which Alice Greggory wanted you to go
to with her."

"I didn't--want--to go," choked Billy, under her breath.

"And there's your music. You haven't done a thing with that for days,
yet only last week you told me the publishers were hurrying you for that
last song to complete the group."

"I haven't felt like--writing," stammered Billy, still half under her
breath.

"Of course you haven't," triumphed Bertram. "You've been too dead tired.
And that's just what I say. Billy, you _can't_ do it all yourself!"

"But I want to. I want to--to tend to things," faltered Billy, with a
half-fearful glance into her husband's face.

Billy was hearing very loudly now that accusing "If you'd tend to your
husband and your home a little more--" Bertram, however, was not hearing
it, evidently. Indeed, he seemed never to have heard it--much less to
have spoken it.

"'Tend to things,'" he laughed lightly. "Well, you'll have enough to do
to tend to the maid, I fancy. Anyhow, we're going to have one. I'll just
step into one of those--what do you call 'em?--intelligence offices on
my way down and send one up," he finished, as he gave his wife a good-by
kiss.

An hour later Billy, struggling with the broom and the drawing-room
carpet, was called to the telephone. It was her husband's voice that
came to her.

"Billy, for heaven's sake, take pity on me. Won't you put on your duds
and come and engage your maid yourself?"

"Why, Bertram, what's the matter?"

"Matter? Holy smoke! Well, I've been to three of those intelligence
offices--though why they call them that I can't imagine. If ever
there was a place utterly devoid of intelligence-but never mind! I've
interviewed four fat ladies, two thin ones, and one medium with a wart.
I've cheerfully divulged all our family secrets, promised every other
half-hour out, and taken oath that our household numbe