he morning. Max took it as a huge joke, and somebody found him at
the telephone, calling up his club. The Mercer girls were hysterically
giggling, and Aunt Selina sat on a stiff-backed chair and took aromatic
spirits of ammonia. As for Jim, he had collapsed on the lowest step of
the stairs, and sat there with his head in his hands. When he did look
up, he didn't dare to look at me.

The Harbison man was arguing with the impassive individual on the top
step outside, and I saw him get out his pocketbook and offer a crisp
bundle of bills. But the man from the board of health only smiled and
tacked at his offensive sign. After a while Mr. Harbison came in and
closed the door, and we stared at one another.

"I know what I'm going to do," I said, swallowing a lump in my throat.
"I'm going to get out through a basement window at the back. I'm going
home."

"Home!" Aunt Selina gasped, jumping up and almost dropping her ammonia
bottle. "My dear Bella! Home?"

Jimmy groaned at the foot of the stairs, but Anne Brown was getting over
her tears and now she turned on me in a temper.

"It's all your fault," she said. "I was going to stay at home and get a
little sleep--"

"Well, you can sleep now," Dallas broke in. "There'll be nothing to do
but sleep."

"I think you haven't grasped the situation, Dal," I said icily. "There
will be plenty to do. There isn't a servant in the house!"

"No servants!" everybody cried at once. The Mercer girls stopped
giggling.

"Holy cats!" Max stopped in the act of hanging up his overcoat. "Do you
mean--why, I can't shave myself! I'll cut my head off."

"You'll do more than that," I retorted grimly. "You will carry coal and
tend fires and empty ash pans, and when you are not doing any of those
things there will be pots and pans to wash and beds to make."

Then there WAS a row. We had worked back to the den now, and I stood in
front of the fireplace and let the storm beat around me, and tried
to look perfectly cold and indifferent, and not to see Mr. Harbison's
shocked face. No wonder he thought them a lot of savages, browbeating
their hostess the way they did.

"It's a fool thing anyhow," Max Reed wound up, "to celebrate the
anniversary of a divorce--especially--" Here he caught Jim's eye and
stopped. But I had suddenly remembered. BELLA DOWN IN THE BASEMENT!

Could anything have been worse? And of course she would have hysteria
and then turn on me and blame me for it all. It all came ove