and give you the slip before Agnes gets back."

Roberts: "What would you do?"

Campbell: "Well, I don't know; I don't like to advise, exactly; but it
seems to me you've got to keep trying. You've got to keep your eye out
for respectable butter-balls, and not let them slip through your
fingers."

Roberts: "You mean, go up and speak to them? I _couldn't_ do that
again."

Campbell: "Well, of course you didn't make a howling success with Mrs.
McIlheny; but it wasn't a dead-failure either. But you must use a
little more diplomacy--lead up to the subject gently. Don't go and ask
a woman if she's a cook, or had an appointment to meet a gentleman
here. _That_ won't do. I'll tell you! You might introduce the
business by asking if she had happened to see a lady coming in or
going out; and then describe Agnes, and say you had expected to meet
her here. And she'll say she hadn't seen her here, but such a lady had
just engaged her as a cook. And then you'll say you're the lady's
husband, and you're sure she'll be in in a moment. And there you are!
That's the way you ought to have worked it with Mrs. McIlheny. Then it
would have come out all right."

Roberts, pessimistically: "I don't see how it would have made her the
cook."

Campbell: "It couldn't have done that, of course; but it would have
done everything short of that. But we're well enough out of it,