"Oh, Auntie, why not?" Alexandra asked, amused but impatient. "Why shouldn't Mother let her do that?"
"Well, it's not my idea of good housekeeping, that's all," Mrs. Otis said staidly. "Managing is the most important part of housekeeping. In giving such a girl financial responsibilities, you not only let go of the control of your household, but you put temptation in her way. No; let the girl try making some beds, and serving tea, now and then; and do your own marketing and paying, Sally. It's the only way."
"Justine tempted—why, she's not that sort of girl at all!" Alexandra laughed gaily.
"Very well, my dear, perhaps she's not, and perhaps you young girls know everything that is to be known about life," her aunt answered witheringly. "But when grown business men were cheated as easily as those men in the First National were," she finished impressively, alluding to recent occurrences in River Falls, "it seems a little astonishing to find a girl your age so sure of her own judgment, that's all."
Sandy's answer, if indirect, was effective.
"How about some tea?" she asked. "Will you have some, either of you? It only takes me a minute to get it."
"And I wish you could have seen Mattie's expression, Kane," Mrs. Salisbury said to her husband when telling him of the conversation that evening, "really, she glared! I suppose she really can't understand how, with an expensive servant in the house—" Mrs. Salisbury's voice dropped a little on a note of mild amusement. She sat idly at her dressing table, her hair loosened, her eyes thoughtful. When she spoke again, it was with a shade of resentment. "And, really, it is most inconvenient," she said. "I don't want to impose upon a girl; I never DID impose upon a girl; but I like to feel that I'm mistress in my own house. If the work is too hard one day, I will make it easier the next, and so on. But, as Mat says, it LOOKS so disobliging in a maid to have her race off; SHE doesn't care whether you get any tea or not; SHE'S enjoying herself! And after all one's kindness—And then another thing," she presently roused herself to add, "Mat thinks that it is very bad management on my part to let Justine handle money. She says—"
"I devoutly wish that Mattie Otis would mind—" Mr. Salisbury did not finish his sentence. He wound his watch, laid it on his bureau, and went on, more mildly: "If you can do better than Justine, it may or may not be worth your while to take that out of her hands; but, if you can't, it seems to me sheer folly. My Lord, Sally—"
"Yes, I know! I know," Mrs. Salisbury said hastily. "But, really, Kane," she went on slowly, the color coming into her face, "let us suppose that every family had a graduate cook, who marketed and managed. And let us suppose the children, like ours, out of the nursery. Then just what share of her own household responsibility IS a woman supposed to take?
"You are eternally saying, not about me, but about other men's wives, that women to-day have too much leisure as it is. But, with a Justine, why, I could go off to clubs and card parties every day! I'd know that the house was clean, the meals as good and as nourishing as could be; I'd know that guests would be well cared for and that bills would be paid. Isn't a woman, the mistress of a house, supposed to do more than that? I don't want to be a mere figurehead."