"Oh! she said she'd go to market right after breakfast, and leave us do what we could without her."
"I understand," said Miss South, as she introduced each of the young girls to the visitors.
"Miss Dreen, the housekeeper," she explained, as they turned to go upstairs, "supervises the girls in the kitchen. I suppose that she left them alone to test their sense of responsibility. She will require a report on her return."
"Well, if they are as frank with her as with us, she will have little to complain of. One looked like an Italian, and I thought that they were never ready to tell the truth."
"That depends on the girl," said Miss South; "but I have confidence in this one. The other, by the way, is German. Edith's protégée, you remember. I wonder where Maggie is," she continued; "she ought to have been there, for we have three girls together serve a turn in the kitchen each week, and we had her begin to-day."
"I wish that Maggie were as pretty as Concetta," said Brenda, in a tone louder than was really necessary, "for Maggie is mortal plain;" and then, at that moment, she ran into somebody in a turn of the hallway, and when in the same instant the door of an opposite room was opened she saw Maggie McSorley gazing up at her with tear-stained eyes.
"Why, Maggie, I came downstairs expressly to find you. Have you been crying?" A glance had assured her that the tears had not been caused by her hasty words. Indeed, the swollen eyes showed that the child had been crying for some time.
"What is the matter, Maggie?" asked Julia, while Nora and Miss South passed on toward the reception-room. "Miss Barlow has come to see you, and she may think that we have not been kind to you."
"Oh, no, 'm, you've been kind;" and Maggie began to sob after the fashion in which she had sobbed during her first interview with Brenda.
At last by dint of much questioning they found that she and Concetta had disagreed when they first set about clearing the table, and while scuffling a pitcher had been broken.