"What is your name, please?" she asked the woman.

"Why, I'll tell you," said the other in a most confidential tone,
blundering up the steps after Janice and stooping to get her lips
near the girl's ear. "My real name is Mrs. Bridget Burns; but my
friends all call me Delia. I don't like 'Bridget.' Would you
mind callin' me Delia, or else Mrs. Burns, heh?"

"I think father would prefer to call you by your first name,"
Janice said, trying not to show her surprise and amusement. "We
will call you Delia if that pleases you."

"You're a real nice little girl, I can see that," said Delia,
with a huge sigh of satisfaction, following Janice, bag and all,
into the house.

Janice led the way up the back stairs to the girl's room. It was
just as Olga had left it--as untidy and "mussed up" as ever a
room was.

Delia uttered a high, nasal ejaculation. "I guess your last girl
wasn't very clean," she said. "Who was she?"

"She was a Swede," Janice replied wearily.

"Heh! Them Swedes!" sniffed Delia, voicing a pronounced national
prejudice.

"She left in a hurry," Janice explained. "She--she got mad. One
of the neighbor's boys played a trick on her and she left."