CHAPTER I
At the Very Beginning – Dividing the Income
Mrs. Thorne laid down the letter she was reading and looked across the table to her husband, who, as he was industriously engaged in buttering a muffin, paid scant attention to her for the moment. Presently, however, as he became aware of something portentous in the air, he looked up and inquired:
"My dear, you alarm me. What's the matter? Has the bank suspended and are you considering how best to break the news to me, or has Dolly eloped with the ice-man?"
His wife did not relax her important expression as she replied, "Dolly's engaged."
"Engaged!" Mr. Thorne assumed an overwhelming surprise. "You don't say so! Now who in the world can she possibly be engaged to?"
Mrs. Thorne regarded him with scorn.
"Just as though you did not know perfectly well! Who could she possibly be engaged to but Fred Mason? I told you a month ago she was certain to be."
"So you did," was the soothing reply, "but I strive to please, and I thought from your manner that you hoped to astonish me with the news. So she's really and truly engaged. Well, I'm glad of it. Fred's a good fellow in spite of the fact that he has arranged to be a brother-in-law to me when he knows that I hate brothers-in-law; and Dolly's a great girl."
"Dolly's a dear, and I only hope he's half good enough for her. But that is only part of the news in the letter."
Her husband took another muffin and looked interested.
"She wants to come and spend a year with us; if we can take her, father and mother will go abroad. Her idea is to learn how to keep house. Listen to what she says:
"'Dearest Mary: —
"'I don't suppose you will be exactly amazed when I tell you that Fred and I are engaged, for when I wrote you last I realized that you must know what was in the air. And I don't suppose I need say that we are the two happiest people in the world and that Fred is the dearest – '"
"Skip all that," pleaded Mr. Thorne.
"Well, I will; but she goes on to say that the firm Fred is with has offered him a better salary than he has now, provided he will go to South America for a year and really learn the business. I'll begin there:
"'That means that we can get married as soon as he comes back, for then he will have as much as eighteen hundred a year, certainly. But even so, with rents so high and food going up daily as the papers say it is, I am sure we shall find it not too easy to make both ends meet, especially as I strongly suspect that years in an expensive apartment hotel do not exactly fit one for living on a little.
"'All this brings me to the point of my letter, which is: won't you please let me come and live with you for a year and learn how to manage? That would be a cool proposition, I am aware, but for certain mitigating circumstances which I hasten to mention.
"'You said in your last letter that Delia was leaving you to be married; I suppose by now she is only a memory. You also said that you dreaded getting a new somebody in her place because you were confident that Fate had in store for you a high-priced, high-spirited and extravagant person who would smash your things and possibly order you out of the kitchen, not to mention putting whole loaves of bread in the garbage pail daily. Now if that remorseless being has not yet arrived, won't you consider me in the light of an applicant for a place as general housework maid in her stead? I'll do anything and everything. I'll take the place of a butler, a cook, a house-maid, a waitress, anything you can mention except a laundress, and you can order me around all you like and I'll never, never answer back. My aprons shall be clean, my hair tidy and my kitchen immaculate. I won't ask for a latch-key, and for only occasional afternoons out in cases of great emergency, such as matinees or afternoon teas and such things. And I'll solemnly promise not to have a single follower.
"'It won't cost any more for you to board me than it would a second edition of Delia, and what you save on wages you can turn in toward the dishes I break and the ingredients I waste in my apprenticeship. Please, please let me come! And send a telegram, for this suspense is wearing me to a thread.
"'Fred sends you his love and says he will be perfectly easy in his mind about me if I am with you while he is away. And he thinks it such a good idea for me to learn to cook!
"'Affectionately yours,
"'Dolly.
"'P. S. Isn't it too perfectly dreadful that he has to go away at all! I'm just in despair.'"
Mrs. Thorne laid down the letter and looked eagerly at her husband. He was smiling broadly.
"Let her come," he said as he rose from his chair. "Poor, heart-broken young thing, it would be cruel to refuse her. Let her divert herself cooking up messes; if we can't eat them we can always invite company, who can't refuse. I'll send her a telegram as I go down town, and congratulate and condole with her, and incidentally include the invitation she wants."
So for a week preparations for the coming of the new maid absorbed her sister's attention. Delia had been a treasure, and there was little cleaning up to follow her departure, but on general principles the pantry shelves were scrubbed and some new saucepans purchased to replace the burned ones bestowed on the ash-man; the dish-towels were done up with extra attention to their folds, and the kitchen window had a fresh curtain.
