oning the price."

Which was true. Beatrice had never had to acquire any sense of values
regarding either money or character. By turns she was penurious and
lavish, suspecting a maid of stealing a sheet of notepaper and then
writing a handsome check for a charity in which she had only a passing
interest. She would send her soiled finery to relief committees, and
when someone told her that satin slippers and torn chiffon frocks were
not practical she would say in injured astonishment: "Sell them and
use the money. I never have practical clothes."

If a maid pleased her Beatrice pampered her until she became
overbearing, and there would be a scene in which the maid would be
told to pack her things and depart without any prospect of a
reference; and someone else would be rushed into her place, only to
have the same experience. Beatrice was like most indulged and
superfluously rich women, both unreasonable and foolishly lenient in
her demands. She had no schedule, no routine, no rules either for
herself or others. She had been denied the chance of developing and
discovering her own limitations and abilities. She expected her maids
and her friends to be at her beck and call twenty-four hours out of
the twenty-four, she would not accept an excuse of being unfitted by
illness for some task or of not knowing how to do any intricate,
unheard-of thing which suddenly it occurred to her must be done.

When a servant would plead her case Beatrice always told her that for
days at a time she left her alone in her beautiful home with nothing
to do but keep it clean and eat up all her food and very likely give
parties and use her talking machine and piano--which was quite
true--and that she must consider this when she was asked to stay on
duty until three or four o'clock in the morning or be up at five
o'clock with an elaborate breakfast for Beatrice and her friends just
returning from a fancy-dress ball.

On a sunny day she often sent the maids driving in her car, and if a
blizzard came up she was certain to ask them to walk downtown to match
yarn for her, not even offering car fare. She would borrow small sums
and stamps from them and deliberately forget to pay them back, at the
same time giving her cook a forty-dollar hat because it made her own
self look too old. She had never had any one but herself to rely upon
for discipline, and whenever she wanted anything she had merely to ask
for it. When anything displeased her it was re