fashioned topics of "trouble with girls," and housekeeping, and
marketing. Alexandra touched these subjects under the titles of
"budgets," "domestic science," and "efficiency." Neither she nor her
mother recognized the old, homely subjects under their new names,
and so the daughter felt a lack of interest, and the mother a lack
of sympathy, that kept them from understanding each other.
Alexandra, ready to meet and conquer all the troubles of a badly
managed world, felt that one small home did not present a very
terrible problem. Poor Mrs. Salisbury only knew that it was becoming
increasingly difficult to keep a general servant at all in a family
of five, and that her husband's salary, of something a little less
than four thousand dollars a year, did not at all seem the princely
sum that they would have thought it when they were married on twenty
dollars a week.

From the younger members of the family, Fred, who was fifteen, and
Stanford, three years younger, she expected, and got, no sympathy.
The three young Salisburys found money interesting only when they
needed it for new gowns, or matinee tickets, or tennis rackets, or
some kindred purchase. They needed it desperately, asked for it, got
it, spent it, and gave it no further thought. It meant nothing to
them that Lizzie was wasteful. It was only to their mother that the
girl's slipshod ways were becoming an absolute trial.

Lizzie, very neat and respectful, would interfere with Mrs.
Salisbury's plan of a visit to the kitchen by appearing to ask for
instructions before breakfast was fairly over. When the man of the
house had gone, and before the children appeared, Lizzie would
inquire: