s marriage--heights of happiness, depths of despair, with the
humdrum of petty differences between?

VI

A MAID AND MODEL

The chiming of the clock an hour after Dicky had gone to the studio
after our little noon dinner next day warned me that I was not dressed
and that the cooks whose advertisements I had answered might call at
any minute. I dressed and arranged my hair. Just as I put in the last
hairpin the bell rang.

Two women, covertly eyeing each other with suspicion, stood in the
hallway when I opened the door. To my invitation to come in each
responded "Thank you," and the entrance of both was quiet. When they
sat down in the chairs I drew forward for them I mentally appraised
them for a moment.

One was a middle-aged woman of the strongly marked German type. Clean,
trig, grim, she spelled efficiency in every line of her body. The
other, a tall Polish girl, of perhaps 22, was also extremely neat, but
her pretty brown hair was blown around her face and her blue eyes were
fairly dancing with eagerness, in contrast to the stolid expression of
the other woman. As I faced them, the older woman compressed her lips
in a thin line, while the girl smiled at me in friendly fashion.

"You came in answer to the advertisements?" I queried.

The older woman silently held forth my letter and two or three other
papers pinned together. I saw that they were references written in
varying feminine chirography. Her silence was almost uncanny.

"Oh, yes, Misses," the Polish girl exclaimed. "I put my--what do you
call it? My--"

"Advertisement," I suggested, smiling. Her good-nature was infectious.

"Oh, yes, ad-ver-tise-ment, in the paper, Sunday. Today your letter
came, the first letter. I guess hard times now. Nobody wants maids.
I come right queeck. I can do good work, very good. I have good
references. You got maid yet?"

"Not yet," I answered, and turned to the other woman.

According to all my theories and my training I should have chosen the
older woman. Efficiency always has been an idol of mine. It was my
slogan in my profession. It is my humiliation that I seem to have
none of it in my housework. The German woman evidently was capable of
administering my household much better than I could do it. Perhaps it
was because of this very reason that I found myself repelled by her,
and subtly drawn by the younger woman's smiling enthusiasm.

"Have you much company, and does your husband bring home friends
w