and a dumbwaiter, and hardwood floors, if Sandy and I couldn't
manage everything? With a woman to clean and dinners downtown now
and then, and a waitress in for occasions."

"And me jumping up to change the salad plates, Mother!" Alexandra
put in briskly. "And a pile of dishes to do every night!"

"Gosh, let's not move into the city--" protested Stanford. "No
tennis, no canoe, no baseball!"

"And we know everyone in River Falls, we'd have to keep coming out
here for parties!" Sandy added.

"Well," Mrs. Salisbury sighed, "I admit that it is too much of a
problem for me!" she said. "I know that I married your father on
twenty dollars a week," she told the children severely, "and we
lived in a dear little cottage, only eighteen dollars a month, and I
did all my own work! And never in our lives have we lived so well.
But the minute you get inexperienced help, your bills simply double,
and inexperienced help means simply one annoyance after another. I
give it up!"

"Well, I'll tell you, Mother," Alexandra offered innocently;
"perhaps we don't systematize enough ourselves. It ought to be all
so well arranged and regulated that a girl would know what she was
expected to do, and know that you had a perfect right to call her
down for wasting or slighting things. Why couldn't women--a bunch of
women, say--"

"Why couldn't they form a set of household rules and regulations?"