She is a robust,
rather handsome woman, with many rings on her fingers, and a pair of
glasses hanging to a little gold hook on her ample bosom; but this
morning she, too, looked worried and old.

"Oh, yes," she said with a rueful laugh, "we're beginning a merry
Christmas, as you see. Think of Christmas with no cook in the house!"

I felt as if I had discovered a gold mine. Poor starving millionaires!

But Mrs. Starkweather had not told the whole of her sorrowful story.

"We had a company of friends invited for dinner to-day," she said, "and
our cook was ill--or said she was--and had to go. One of the maids went
with her. The man who looks after the furnace disappeared on Friday, and
the stableman has been drinking. We can't very well leave the place
without some one who is responsible in charge of it--and so here we are.
Merry Christmas!"

I couldn't help laughing. Poor people!

"You might," I said, "apply for Mrs. Heney's place."

"Who is Mrs. Heney?" asked Mrs. Starkweather.

"You don't mean to say that you never heard of Mrs. Heney!" I exclaimed.
"Mrs. Heney, who is now Mrs. 'Penny' Daniels? You've missed one of our
greatest celebrities."

With that, of course, I had to tell them about Mrs. Heney, who has for
years performed a most important function in this community. Alone and
unaided she has been the poor whom we are supposed to have always with
us. If it had not been for the devoted faithfulness of Mrs. Heney at
Thanksgiving, Christmas and other times of the year, I suppose our
Woman's Aid Society and the King's Daughters would have perished
miserably of undistributed turkeys and tufted comforters. For years Mrs.
Heney filled the place most acceptably. Curbing the natural outpourings
of a rather jovial soul she could upon occasion look as deserving of
charity as any person that ever I met. But I pitied the little Heneys:
it always comes hard on the children. For weeks after every Thanksgiving
and Christmas they always wore a painfully stuffed and suffocated look.
I only came to appreciate fully what a self-sacrificing public servant
Mrs. Heney really was when I learned that she had taken the desperate
alternative of marrying "Penny" Daniels.

"So you think we might possibly aspire to the position?" laughed Mrs.
Starkweather.

Upon this I told them of the trouble in our household and asked them to
come down and help us enjoy Dr. McAlway and the goose.

When I left, after much more pleasant talk, they