"O no, thank you!" replied Viva. "I have engaged a new housekeeper."
"A new housekeeper! When?" The old lady was shaken by this inconceivable promptness.
"Last night," said her daughter-in-law, looking calmly across the table, her color rising a little.
"And when is she coming, if I may ask?"
"She has come. I have been with her an hour already this morning."
Young Mathew smiled. This was amusing, though not what he had expected. "How extremely alert and businesslike!" he said lazily. "It's becoming to you—to get up early!"
"You can't have got much of a person—at a minute's notice," said his grandmother. "Or perhaps you have been planning this for some time?"
"No," said Viva. "I have wanted to get rid of Mrs. Halsey for some time, but the new one I found yesterday."
"What's her name?" inquired Mathew.
"Bell—Miss Diantha Bell," she answered, looking as calm as if announcing the day of the week, but inwardly dreading the result somewhat. Like most of such terrors it was overestimated.
There was a little pause—rather an intense little pause; and then—"Isn't that the girl who set 'em all by the ears yesterday?" asked the young man, pointing to the morning paper. "They say she's a good-looker."
Madam Weatherstone rose from the table in some agitation. "I must say I am very sorry, Viva, that you should have been so—precipitate! This young woman cannot be competent to manage a house like this—to say nothing of her scandalous ideas. Mrs. Halsey was—to my mind—perfectly satisfactory. I shall miss her very much." She swept out with an unanswerable air.
"So shall I," muttered Mat, under his breath, as he strolled after her; "unless the new one's equally amiable."
Viva Weatherstone watched them go, and stood awhile looking after the well-built, well-dressed, well-mannered but far from well-behaved young man.
"I don't know," she said to herself, "but I do feel—think—imagine—a good deal. I'm sure I hope not! Anyway—it's new life to have that girl in the house."
That girl had undertaken what she described to Ross as "a large order—a very large order."
"It's the hardest thing I ever undertook," she wrote him, "but I think I can do it; and it will be a tremendous help. Mrs. Weatherstone's a brick—a perfect brick! She seems to have been very unhappy—for ever so long—and to have submitted to her domineering old mother-in-law just because she didn't care enough to resist. Now she's got waked up all of a sudden—she says it was my paper at the club—more likely my awful example, I think! and she fired her old housekeeper—I don't know what for—and rushed me in.
"So here I am. The salary is good, the work is excellent training, and I guess I can hold the place. But the old lady is a terror, and the young man—how you would despise that Johnny!"
The home letters she now received were rather amusing. Ross, sternly patient, saw little difference in her position. "I hope you will enjoy your new work," he wrote, "but personally I should prefer that you did not—so you might give it up and come home sooner. I miss you as you can well imagine. Even when you were here life was hard enough—but now!!!!!!
"I had a half offer for the store the other day, but it fell through. If I could sell that incubus and put the money into a ranch—fruit, hens, anything—then we could all live on it; more cheaply, I think; and I could find time for some research work I have in mind. You remember that guinea-pig experiment I want so to try?"
Diantha remembered and smiled sadly. She was not much interested in guinea-pigs and their potential capacities, but she was interested in her lover and his happiness. "Ranch," she said thoughtfully; "that's not a bad idea."
Her mother wrote the same patient loving letters, perfunctorily hopeful. Her father wrote none—"A woman's business—this letter-writin'," he always held; and George, after one scornful upbraiding, had "washed his hands of her" with some sense of relief. He didn't like to write letters either.
But Susie kept up a lively correspondence. She was attached to her sister, as to all her immediate relatives and surroundings; and while she utterly disapproved of Diantha's undertaking, a sense of sisterly duty, to say nothing of affection, prompted her to many letters. It did not, however, always make these agreeable reading.
"Mother's pretty well, and the girl she's got now does nicely—that first one turned out to be a failure. Father's as cranky as ever. We are all well here and the baby (this was a brand new baby Diantha had not seen) is just a Darling! You ought to be here, you unnatural Aunt! Gerald doesn't ever speak of you—but I do just the same. You hear from the Wardens, of course. Mrs. Warden's got neuralgia or something; keeps them all busy. They are much excited over this new place of yours—you ought to hear them go on! It appears that Madam Weatherstone is a connection of theirs—one of the F. F. V's, I guess, and they think she's something wonderful. And to have you working there!—well, you can just see how they'd feel; and I don't blame them. It's no use arguing with you—but I should think you'd have enough of this disgraceful foolishness by this time and come home!"
Diantha tried to be very philosophic over her home letters; but they were far from stimulating. "It's no use arguing with poor Susie!" she decided. "Susie thinks the sun rises and sets between kitchen, nursery and parlor!
"Mother can't see the good of it yet, but she will later—Mother's all right.
"I'm awfully sorry the Wardens feel so—and make Ross unhappy—but of course I knew they would. It can't be helped. It's just a question of time and work."
And she went to work.
Mrs. Porne called on her friend most promptly, with a natural eagerness and curiosity.
"How does it work? Do you like her as much as you thought? Do tell me about it, Viva. You look like another woman already!"
"I certainly feel like one," Viva answered. "I've seen slaves in housework, and I've seen what we fondly call 'Queens' in housework; but I never saw brains in it before."
Mrs. Porne sighed. "Isn't it just wonderful—the way she does things! Dear me! We do miss her! She trained that Swede for us—and she does pretty well—but not like 'Miss Bell'! I wish there were a hundred of her!"
"If there were a hundred thousand she wouldn't go round!" answered Mrs. Weatherstone. "How selfish we are! That is the kind of woman we all want in our homes—and fuss because we can't have them."
"Edgar says he quite agrees with her views," Mrs. Porne went on. "Skilled labor by the day—food sent in—. He says if she cooked it he wouldn't care if it came all the way from Alaska! She certainly can cook! I wish she'd set up her business—the sooner the better."
Mrs. Weatherstone nodded her head firmly. "She will. She's planning. This was really an interruption—her coming here, but I think it will be a help—she's not had experience in large management before, but she takes hold splendidly. She's found a dozen 'leaks' in our household already."
"Mrs. Thaddler's simply furious, I hear," said the visitor. "Mrs. Ree was in this morning and told me all about it. Poor Mrs. Ree! The home is church and state to her; that paper of Miss Bell's she regards as simple blasphemy."
They both laughed as that stormy meeting rose before them.
"I was so proud of you, Viva, standing up for her as you did. How did you ever dare?"
"Why I got my courage from the girl herself. She was—superb! Talk of blasphemy! Why I've committed lese majeste and regicide and the Unpardonable Sin since that meeting!" And she told her friend of her brief passage at arms with Mrs. Halsey. "I never liked the woman," she continued; "and some of the things Miss Bell said set me thinking. I don't believe we half know what's going on in our houses."
"Well, Mrs. Thaddler's