mulous with childish eagerness, resolved themselves into a committee
of ways and means; for they were two well-guarded young women, and to
engineer five hours of liberty was difficult to the verge of
impossibility. However, there is a financial manoeuvre known as
"kiting checks," whereby A exchanges a check with B and B swaps with A
again, playing an imaginary balance against Time and the Clearing House;
and by a similar scheme, which an acute student of social ethics has
called "kiting calls," the girls found that they could make Saturday
afternoon their own, without one glance from the watchful eyes of
Esther's mother or Louise's aunt--Louise had only an aunt to reckon
with.

"And, oh, Esther!" cried the bolder of the conspirators, "I've thought
of a trunk--of course I've got to have a trunk, or she would ask me
where it was, and I couldn't tell her a fib. Don't you remember the
French maid who died three days after she came here? Her trunk is up in
the store-room still, and I don't believe anybody will ever come for
it--it's been there seven years now. Let's go up and look at it."

The girls romped upstairs to the great unused upper story, where heaps
of household rubbish obscured the dusty half-windows. In a corner,
behind Louise's baby chair and an unfashionable hat-rack of the old
steering-wheel pattern, they found the little brown-painted tin trunk,
corded up with clothesline.

"Louise!" said Esther, hastily, "what did you tell her your name was?"

"I just said 'Louise'."

Esther pointed to the name painted on the trunk,

LOUISE LEVY

"It is the hand of Providence," she said. "Somehow, now, I'm _sure_
you're quite right to go."

And neither of these conscientious young ladies reflected for one minute
on the discomfort which might be occasioned to Madame Remy by the
defection of her new servant a half-hour before dinner-time on Saturday
night.

* * * * *

"Oh, child, it's you, is it?" was Mme. Remy's greeting at twelve o'clock
on Saturday. "Well, you're punctual--and you look clean. Now, are you
going to break my dishes or are you going to steal my rings? Well, we'll
find out soon enough. Your trunk's up in your room. Go up to the
servant's quarters--right at the top of those stairs there. Ask for the
room that belongs to apartment 11. You are to room with their girl."

Louise was glad of a moment's respite. She had taken the plunge; she