"She does if she's in the house, Mattie, just as she answers the
telephone. But she's only actually on duty one afternoon a week."

"You see, the theory is, Auntie," Sandy supplied, "that persons on
our income--I won't say of our position, for Mother hates that--but
on our income, aren't supposed to require formal door-answering very
often."

Mrs. Otis, her knitting suspended, moved her round eyes from mother
to daughter and back again. She did not say a word, but words were
not needed.

"I know it seems outrageous, in some ways, Mattie," Mrs. Salisbury
presently said, with a little nervous laugh. "But what is one to
do?"

"Do?" echoed her sister roundly. "DO? Well, I know I keep six house
servants, and have always kept at least three, and I never heard the
equal of THIS in all my days! Do?--I'd show you what I'd do fast
enough! Do you suppose I'd pay a maid thirty-seven dollars a month
to go tramping off to the library in the rain, and to tell me what
my social status was? Why, Evelyn keeps two, and pays one eighteen
and one fifteen, and do you suppose she'd allow either such
liberties? Not at all. The downstairs girl wears a nice little cap
and apron--'Madam, dinner is served,' she says--"

"Yes, but Evelyn's had seven cooks since she was married," Sandy,
who was not a great admirer of her young married cousin, put in
here, "and Arthur said that she actually cried because she could not
give a decent dinner!"