"Not so dreadful," her father said, pleasantly surprised.

"But, listen, Dad! Thirty dollars for a family of two, and an
additional two dollars and a half monthly for each other member of
the family. That would make ours thirty-seven dollars and a half,
wouldn't it?" she computed swiftly.

"Awful! Impossible!" Mrs. Salisbury said instantly, almost in
relief. The discussion made her vaguely uneasy. What did these
casual amateurs know about the domestic problem, anyway? Kane, who
was always anxious to avoid details; Sandy, all youthful enthusiasm
and ignorance, and Owen Sargent, quoting his insufferable mother?
For some moments she had been fighting an impulse to soothe them all
with generalities. "Never mind; it's always been a problem, and it
always will be! These new schemes are all very well, but don't
trouble your dear heads about it any longer!"

Now she sank back, satisfied. The whole thing was but a mad, Utopian
dream. Thirty-seven dollars indeed! "Why, one could get two good
servants for that!" thought Mrs. Salisbury, with the same sublime
faith with which she had told her husband, in poorer days, years
ago, that, if they could but afford her, she knew they could get a
"fine girl" for three dollars a week. The fact that the "fine girl"
did not apparently exist did not at all shake Mrs. Salisbury's
confidence that she could get two "good girls." Her hope in the
untried solution rose with every failure.

"Thirty-seven is steep," said Kane Salisbury slowly. "However! What
do we pay now, Mother?"