I don't know," said the judge; "you can ask Huldah herself."

"Who? what? You don't mean that mother is Huldah?"

It was a cry in concert.

"Mother" was a little red in the face behind the copy of Whittier she
was affecting to read.

_1870._

THE NEW CASHIER.

My friend Macartney-Smith has working theories for everything. He
illustrated one of these the other day by relating something that
happened in the Giralda apartment house, where he lives in a suite
overlooking Central Park. I do not remember whether he was expounding
his notion that the apartment house has solved the question of
co-operative housekeeping, or whether he was engaged in demonstrating
certain propositions regarding the influence of the city on the
country. Since I have forgotten what it was intended to prove, the
incident has seemed more interesting. It is bad for a story to medicate
it with a theory. However, here are the facts as Macartney-Smith
relates them with his Q.E.D. omitted.

* * * * *

I do not know [he began] by what accident or on what recommendation the
manager of the Giralda brought a girl from Iowa to act as clerk and
cashier in the restaurant.

The new cashier had lived in a town where there were differences in
social standing, but no recognized distinctions, after you had left out
the sedimentary poverty-stricken class. She not only had no notions of
the lines of social cleavage in a great apartment-house, but she had
never heard of chaperonage, or those other indelicacies that go along
with the high civilization of a metropolis. I have no doubt she was the
best scholar in the arithmetic class in the village high school, and
ten to one she was the champion at croquet. She took life with a zest
unknown to us New Yorkers, and let the starchiest people in the house
know that she was glad to see them when they returned after an absence
by going across the dining-room to shake hands with them and to inquire
whether they had had a good time. Even the gently frigid manner of Mrs.
Drupe could not chill her friendliness; she was accustomed to accost
that lady in the elevator, and demand, "How is Mr. Drupe?" whenever
that gentleman chanced to be absent. It was not possible for her to
imagine that Mrs. Drupe could be otherwise than grateful for any
manifestation of a friendly interest in her husband.

To show any irritation was not Mrs. Drupe's way; that would have
disturbed the sty