sympathetically:

"What is the matter, mother dear! Has your door sprung?"

"It has. Tell James to come here at once and bring a crow-bar if
necessary."

"Yes, darling."

Alexina let down her hair and tore off her evening gown, kicking it into a
closet, then threw on a bathrobe and ran over to the servants' quarters in
an extension behind the house. They were deserted, but wild shrieks and
gales of unseemly laughter arose from the yard. She opened a window and saw
the cook, a recent importation, on the ground in hysterics, the housemaid
throwing water on her, and the inherited butler calmly lighting his pipe,

"James," she called. "My mother's door is jammed. Please come right away."

"Yes, miss." He knocked his pipe against the wall and ground out the
life of the coal with his slippered heel. "Just what happened to your
grandmother in the 'quake of sixty-eight. I mind the time I had getting her
out."



IV


It was quite half an hour before the door yielded to the combined efforts
of James and the gardener-coachman, and during the interval Mrs. Groome