proved exasperating; the cook was apt to become surcharged, so
that explosive resignations, never rare, were somewhat more
frequent after the introduction of the gong.

Mrs. Adams took this increased frequency to be only another
manifestation of the inexplicable new difficulties that beset all
housekeeping. You paid a cook double what you had paid one a few
years before; and the cook knew half as much of cookery, and had
no gratitude. The more you gave these people, it seemed, the
worse they behaved--a condition not to be remedied by simply
giving them less, because you couldn't even get the worst unless
you paid her what she demanded. Nevertheless, Mrs. Adams
remained fitfully an optimist in the matter. Brought up by her
mother to speak of a female cook as "the girl," she had been
instructed by Alice to drop that definition in favour of one not
an improvement in accuracy: "the maid." Almost always, during
the first day or so after every cook came, Mrs. Adams would say,
at intervals, with an air of triumph: "I believe--of course it's
a little soon to be sure--but I do really believe this new maid
is the treasure we've been looking for so long!" Much in the same
way that Alice dreamed of a mysterious perfect mate for whom she
"waited," her mother had a fairy theory that hidden somewhere in
the universe there was the treasure, the perfect "maid," who
would come and cook in the Adamses' kitchen, not four days or
four weeks, but forever.

The present incumbent was not she. Alice, profoundly interested
herself, kept her mother likewise so preoccupied with the dress
that they were but vaguely conscious of the gong's soft warnings,
though these were repeated and protracted unusually. Finally the