Back in Denver once more, Mr. Alexander found a telegram awaiting him. In it he read that his wife and daughter would leave Colorado Springs and planned to arrive in the city that same evening, as Mrs. Alexander had unexpectedly decided to join the travelers to Arizona.
“Now, what d’ye think of that?” exclaimed little Mr. Alexander, snapping the telegram with impatient fingers. “It’s all right for Dodo to come, but my wife isn’t used to roughin’ it—least-ways, she don’t care for it, since we got so much money to spend.”
“Oh, I shall enjoy having another woman help me to keep all the girls in order,” remarked Mrs. Courtney, pleasantly.
“Don’t fool yourself, Madam—my wife isn’t goin’ to be much help in lookin’ after others. She demands all the lookin’ after for herself. I gen’ally see to it that she has a lady’s maid to wait on her—that lets me out of buttonin’ her boots, and runnin’ here and there like a beast of burden, to take or carry her shawl, or parasol, or smellin’ salts. Since she’s takin’ to golf and tennis, it’s her golf-bag or the tennis racquet I’m expected to carry. I’m sorry to have to explain so much of my family troubles to you, Madam, but you must know that I hate to play caddie, though my wife says I resemble one.” The humility and meekness of the little man made Mrs. Courtney feel as though she must stand by him in some way—just as Polly’s friends had felt, as soon as they had grown to understand him on that European tour.
“If you really wish to secure a competent lady’s maid for your wife, maybe I might help you in seeking for one in the city to-day,” ventured Mrs. Courtney, though she realized what a social error she was committing in offering to engage a maid for another woman.
“Oh, say! If you’d do that for me, Madam, I’ll never forget it. I want to give my time to Mr. Dalken and the men we hope to meet here in Denver and, later on, in Prescott. If Mrs. Alexander demands my attention, how can I serve two masters?” appealed the little man.
“Just tell me the kind of maid I ought to hire, and I’ll move heaven and earth to find one for you,” promised Mrs. Courtney; at the same time she wondered what had come over her to make her step into another woman’s place in this way, and thus force that woman to give the husband all the spare time he craved to attend to business affairs. But Mrs. Courtney had no idea that she was acting because of her deep interest in the South American land plans, in which Mr. Dalken had not only committed himself as well as his keen business brain, but also had signed for great blocks of stock that would bankrupt him should the scheme fail.
“It must not fail!” said Mrs. Courtney, vehemently, to herself.
Thus it came to pass that Polly and Eleanor were invited to accompany their chaperon to one of the best employment offices in Denver that same afternoon of their arrival at the hotel. And to their amusement, they heard and saw Mrs. Courtney interrogate several maids, believing as she did, that maids out west must be much like maids in New York. She was soon informed to the contrary however.
To her questions of “Can you dress hair stylishly?” “Do you wash and mend laces neatly?” “Are you experienced in manicuring?” “and in preparing the bath?” and other personal attentions, she heard to her surprise: “I kin darn socks, lady”; or “I have sewed clothes sence I was knee-high to a prairie-dog”; or, perhaps, the applicant would explain, “I ain’t no common general worker, lady, but I kin do plain cookin’, er lend a hand at the wash-tub, when it’s called for. I even will agree to het the water fer the baths, ef so come yuh-all need it that way.”