One was a middle-aged woman of the strongly marked German type. Clean, trig, grim, she spelled efficiency in every line of her body. The other, a tall Polish girl, of perhaps 22, was also extremely neat, but her pretty brown hair was blown around her face and her blue eyes were fairly dancing with eagerness, in contrast to the stolid expression of the other woman. As I faced them, the older woman compressed her lips in a thin line, while the girl smiled at me in friendly fashion.
"You came in answer to the advertisements?" I queried.
The older woman silently held forth my letter and two or three other papers pinned together. I saw that they were references written in varying feminine chirography. Her silence was almost uncanny.
"Oh, yes, Misses," the Polish girl exclaimed. "I put my—what do you call it? My—"
"Advertisement," I suggested, smiling. Her good-nature was infectious.
"Oh, yes, ad-ver-tise-ment, in the paper, Sunday. Today your letter came, the first letter. I guess hard times now. Nobody wants maids. I come right queeck. I can do good work, very good. I have good references. You got maid yet?"
"Not yet," I answered, and turned to the other woman.
According to all my theories and my training I should have chosen the older woman. Efficiency always has been an idol of mine. It was my slogan in my profession. It is my humiliation that I seem to have none of it in my housework. The German woman evidently was capable of administering my household much better than I could do it. Perhaps it was because of this very reason that I found myself repelled by her, and subtly drawn by the younger woman's smiling enthusiasm.
"Have you much company, and does your husband bring home friends without notice?" The older woman's harsh tones broke in.
The questions turned the scale. From the standpoint of strict justice, the standard from which I always had tried to reason, she was perfectly justified in asking the questions before she took the place. But intuition told me that our home life would be a dreary thing with this martinet in the kitchen.
"That will not trouble you," I said, "for I do not believe I wish your services. Here is your car fare, and thank you for coming."
The woman took the car fare with the same stolidity she had shown through the whole interview. "I do not think I would like you for a madam, either," she said quietly as she went out.
The Polish girl bounced from her seat as soon as the door was closed.
"She no good to talk to you like that," she exclaimed. "She old crank, anyway. You not like her. See me—I young, strong; I cook, wash, iron, clean. I do everything. You do notting. I cook good, too; not so much fancy, but awful good. My last madam, I with her one year. She sick, go South yesterday. She cry, say 'I so sorry, Katie; you been so good to me.' I cry, too. Read what she say about me."
I could read between the lines of the rather odd letter of recommendation the girl handed me. I had dealt with many girls of Katie's type in my teaching days. I knew the childish temper, the irritating curiosity, the petty jealousy, the familiarity which one not understanding would deem impertinence, with which I would have to contend if I engaged her. But the other applicant for my work, the grim vision who had just left, decided me. I would try this eager girl if her terms were reasonable—and they were.
As I preceded her into the kitchen I had a sudden qualm. I knew Dicky's fastidious taste, and that underneath all his good-natured unconventionality he had rigid ideas of his own upon some topics. I happened to remember that nothing made him so nervous and irritable as bad service in a restaurant. His idea of a good waiter was a well-trained automaton with no eyes or ears. How would he like this enthusiastic, irrepressible girl? It was too late now, however. I was committed to a week of her service.
I had a luxurious afternoon. Katie in the kitchen sang softly over her work some minor-cadenced Polish folk-song, and I nestled deep in an armchair by the sunniest window, dipped deep into the pages of magazines and newspapers which I had not read. I realized with a start that I was out of touch with the doings of the outside world, something which had not happened to me before for years, save in the few awful days of my mother's last illness. I really must catch up again.
I was so deep in a vivid description of the desolation in Belgium that
I did not hear Dicky enter. I started as he kissed me.
"Headache better, sweetheart?" he added, lover-like remembering and making much of the slight headache I had had when he left that morning. "It must be, or you wouldn't be able to read that horror." He closed the magazine playfully and drew me to my feet.
"I am perfectly well," I replied, "and I have good news for you. We have a maid, a trifle rough in her manner, but one who I think will be very good."
"That's fine," Dicky said heartily. "I'd much rather come home to find you comfortably reading than scorching your face and reddening your hands in a kitchen."
"Say, Missis Graham!"
Katie came swiftly into the room, and I heard an exclamation of surprise from Dicky.
"Why, Katie, wherever did you come from?"
But Katie, with a scream of fear, her face white with terror, backed into the kitchen. I heard her opening the door where she had put her hat and cloak, then the slamming of the kitchen door.
I looked at Dicky in amazement. What did it all mean?
He caught up his hat and dashed to the front door.
"Quick, Madge!" he called. "Follow her out the kitchen door as fast as you can. I'll meet you at the servant's entrance! I wouldn't let her get away for a hundred dollars!"
I obeyed Dicky's instructions, but with a feeling of disgust creeping over me. I have always hated a scene, and this performance savored too much of moving picture melodrama to suit me.
I hurried down the two flights of stairs and on toward the servant's entrance. I was almost there when Katie came flying back, almost into my arms.
"Oh, Missis Graham," she moaned.
"You kind lady. I pay it all back. I always have it with me. Don't let him put me in prison. I work, work my fingers to the bone for you. If you only not let him put me in prison."
Dicky came up behind us. As she saw him she shrank closer to me in a pitiful, frightened way, and put out both her hands as if to push him away.
"Don't be frightened, Katie," he said. Come to the house and tell me about it."
"Bring her into the living room and get her quieted before I talk to her," suggested Dicky, as he disappeared into his room after I had got her upstairs.
Bewildered and displeased at this bizarre situation which had been thrust upon me, I ushered Katie into the living room and removed her hat and coat. She trembled violently.
I went to the dining room and from a decanter in the sideboard poured a glass of wine and, bringing it back, pressed it to her lips. She drank it, and the color gradually came back to her face and the twitching of her muscles lessened.
When she was calmer I took her hands in mine and, looking her full in the face in the manner which I had sometimes used to quiet an hysterical
