rs three
adult members, and no more; but I simply _can't_ remember how many
handkerchiefs we have in the wash each week. Billy, will you come? Maybe
you can do something with them. I'm sure you can!"

"Why, of course I'll come," chirped Billy. "Where shall I meet you?"

Bertram gave the street and number.

"Good! I'll be there," promised Billy, as she hung up the receiver.

Quite forgetting the broom in the middle of the drawing-room floor,
Billy tripped up-stairs to change her dress. On her lips was a gay
little song. In her heart was joy.

"I rather guess _now_ I'm tending to my husband and my home!" she was
crowing to herself.

Just as Billy was about to leave the house the telephone bell jangled
again.

It was Alice Greggory.

"Billy, dear," she called, "can't you come out? Mr. Arkwright and Mr.
Calderwell are here, and they've brought some new music. We want you.
Will you come?"

"I can't, dear. Bertram wants me. He's sent for me. I've got some
_housewifely_ duties to perform to-day," returned Billy, in a voice so
curiously triumphant that Alice, at her end of the wires, frowned in
puzzled wonder as she turned away from the telephone.

CHAPTER XVI. INTO TRAINING FOR MARY ELLEN

Bertram told a friend afterwards that he never knew the meaning of the
word "chaos" until he had seen the Strata during the weeks immediately
following the laying away of his old servant.

"Every stratum was aquiver with apprehension," he declared; "and there
was never any telling when the next grand upheaval would rock the whole
structure to its foundations."

Nor was Bertram so far from being right. It was, indeed, a chaos, as
none knew better than did Bertram's wife.

Poor Billy! Sorry indeed were these days for Billy; and, as if to make
her cup of woe full to overflowing, there were Sister Kate's epistolary
"I told you so," and Aunt Hannah's ever recurring lament: "If only,
Billy, you were a practical housekeeper yourself, they wouldn't impose
on you so!"

Aunt Hannah, to be sure, offered Rosa, and Kate, by letter, offered
advice--plenty of it. But Billy, stung beyond all endurance, and fairly
radiating hurt pride and dogged determination, disdained all assistance,
and, with head held high, declared she was getting along very well, very
well indeed!

And this was the way she "got along."

First came Nora. Nora was a blue-eyed, black-haired Irish girl, the
sixth that the despairing Billy had interviewed on t