ide the stairs.
Will I turn on your bath now?"

"Please don't trouble. I--"

"No trouble at all, ma'am. Indeed, and I'm sure you'll find us all
very happy to do anything we can for you. It'll be a nice change
to be waiting on a pleasant-spoken person like yourself after that"--
with a sniff--"Miss Matring."

"Oh!" Genuine disappointment was responsible for the exclamation. But
a moment's thought persuaded Sally she had been unreasonable to hope
her secret might be kept from the servants. Even if Mrs. Standish had
not betrayed it to this maid, there had been that flunky, Thomas, in
the reception-hall close at hand during the establishment of Sally's
status, with his pose of inhuman detachment of interest--quite too
perfect to be true.

"Beg pardon, ma'am?"

"Oh, nothing!" Sally swallowed her chagrin bravely. "I mean, thank you
very much, but I'm accustomed to waiting on myself--except when it
comes to hooks up the back--and you must have enough to keep you busy
with so many people in the house."

"Not a great many just now, ma'am--not more'n a dozen, counting in
Mrs. Standish and her brother and you. This has been an off week, so
to speak, but they'll be arriving in plenty to-morrow and Saturday,
I'm told."

That gossip was the woman's failing was a fact as obvious as that her
desire was only to be friendly; brief reflection persuaded Sally that
it was to her own interest neither to snub nor to neglect this
gratuitous source of information. With some guilty conceit, befitting
one indulging in all most Machiavellian subtlety, she let fall an
extravagantly absent-minded "Yes?" and was rewarded, quite properly,
with a garrulous history of her predecessor's career, from which she
disengaged only two profitable impressions: that the staff of servants
was devoted to their mistress, and that it would little advantage a
secretary to quarrel with the one in the hope of ingratiating herself
with the other.

So she contrived, as soon as might be without giving offence, to
interrupt and dismiss the maid; then steeled her heart against the
temptation to try on everything at once, and profited by long practice
in the nice art of bathing, dressing, breakfasting, and trudging two
miles in minimum time--between, that is, the explosion of a matutinal
alarm and the last moment when one might, without incurring a fine,
register arrival on the clock at Huckster's entrance for employees.
She hadn't the slightest notion what Mrs. S