Even as they spoke a toneless voice announced, "Mr. and Mrs. Thaddler," and Madam Weatherstone presently appeared to greet these visitors.
"I think you are trying a dangerous experiment!" said Mrs. Thaddler to her young hostess. "A very dangerous experiment! Bringing that young iconoclast into your home!"
Mr. Thaddler, stout and sulky, sat as far away as he could and talked to Mrs. Porne. "I'd like to try that same experiment myself," said he to her. "You tried it some time, I understand?"
"Indeed we did—and would still if we had the chance," she replied. "We think her a very exceptional young woman."
Mr. Thaddler chuckled. "She is that!" he agreed. "Gad! How she did set things humming! They're humming yet—at our house!"
He glanced rather rancorously at his wife, and Mrs. Porne wished, as she often had before, that Mr. Thaddler wore more clothing over his domestic afflictions.
"Scandalous!" Mrs. Thaddler was saying to Madam Weatherstone. "Simply scandalous! Never in my life did I hear such absurd—such outrageous—charges against the sanctities of the home!"
"There you have it!" said Mr. Thaddler, under his breath. "Sanctity of the fiddlesticks! There was a lot of truth in what that girl said!" Then he looked rather sheepish and flushed a little—which was needless; easing his collar with a fat finger.
Madam Weatherstone and Mrs. Thaddler were at one on this subject; but found it hard to agree even so, no love being lost between them; and the former gave evidence of more satisfaction than distress at this "dangerous experiment" in the house of her friends. Viva sat silent, but with a look of watchful intelligence that delighted Mrs. Porne.
"It has done her good already," she said to herself. "Bless that girl!"
Mr. Thaddler went home disappointed in the real object of his call—he had hoped to see the Dangerous Experiment again. But his wife was well pleased.
"They will rue it!" she announced. "Madam Weatherstone is ashamed of her daughter-in-law—I can see that! She looks cool enough. I don't know what's got into her!"
"Some of that young woman's good cooking," her husband suggested.
"That young woman is not there as cook!" she replied tartly. "What she is there for we shall see later! Mark my words!"
Mr. Thaddler chuckled softly. "I'll mark 'em!" he said.
Diantha had her hands full. Needless to say her sudden entrance was resented by the corps of servants accustomed to the old regime. She had the keys; she explored, studied, inventoried, examined the accounts, worked out careful tables and estimates. "I wish Mother were here!" she said to herself. "She's a regular genius for accounts. I can do it—but it's no joke."
She brought the results to her employer at the end of the week. "This is tentative," she said, "and I've allowed margins because I'm new to a business of this size. But here's what this house ought to cost you—at the outside, and here's what it does cost you now."
Mrs. Weatherstone was impressed. "Aren't you a little—spectacular?" she suggested.
Diantha went over it carefully; the number of rooms, the number of servants, the hours of labor, the amount of food and other supplies required.
"This is only preparatory, of course," she said. "I'll have to check it off each month. If I may do the ordering and keep all the accounts I can show you exactly in a month, or two at most."
"How about the servants?" asked Mrs. Weatherstone.
There was much to say here, questions of competence, of impertinence, of personal excellence with "incompatibility of temper." Diantha was given a free hand, with full liberty to experiment, and met the opportunity with her usual energy.
She soon discharged the unsatisfactory ones, and substituted the girls she had selected for her summer's experiment, gradually adding others, till the household was fairly harmonious, and far more efficient and economical. A few changes were made among the men also.
By the time the family moved down to Santa Ulrica, there was quite a new spirit in the household. Mrs. Weatherstone fully approved of the Girls' Club Diantha had started at Mrs. Porne's; and it went on merrily in the larger quarters of the great "cottage" on the cliff.
"I'm very glad I came to you, Mrs. Weatherstone," said the girl. "You were quite right about the experience; I did need it—and I'm getting it!"
She was getting some of which she made no mention.
As she won and held the confidence of her subordinates, and the growing list of club members, she learned their personal stories; what had befallen them in other families, and what they liked and disliked in their present places.
"The men are not so bad," explained Catharine Kelly, at a club meeting, meaning the men servants; "they respect an honest girl if she respects herself; but it's the young masters—and sometimes the old ones!"
"It's all nonsense," protested Mrs. James, widowed cook of long standing. "I've worked out for twenty-five years, and I never met no such goings on!"
Little Ilda looked at Mrs. James' severe face and giggled.
"I've heard of it," said Molly Connors, "I've a cousin that's workin' in New York; and she's had to leave two good places on account of their misbehavin' theirselves. She's a fine girl, but too good-lookin'."
Diantha studied types, questioned them, drew them out, adjusted facts to theories and theories to facts. She found the weakness of the whole position to lie in the utter ignorance and helplessness of the individual servant. "If they were only organized," she thought—"and knew their own power!—Well; there's plenty of time."
As her acquaintance increased, and as Mrs. Weatherstone's interest in her plans increased also, she started the small summer experiment she had planned, for furnishing labor by the day. Mrs. James was an excellent cook, though most unpleasant to work with. She was quite able to see that getting up frequent lunches at three dollars, and dinners at five dollars, made a better income than ten dollars a week even with several days unoccupied.
A group of younger women, under Diantha's sympathetic encouragement, agreed to take a small cottage together, with Mrs. James as a species of chaperone; and to go out in twos and threes as chambermaids and waitresses at 25 cents an hour. Two of them could set in perfect order one of the small beach cottage in an hour's time; and the occupants, already crowded for room, were quite willing to pay a little more in cash "not to have a servant around." Most of them took their meals out in any case.
It was a modest attempt, elastic and easily alterable and based on the special conditions of a shore resort: Mrs. Weatherstone's known interest gave it social backing; and many ladies who heartily disapproved of Diantha's theories found themselves quite willing to profit by this very practical local solution of the "servant question."
The "club girls" became very popular. Across the deep hot sand they ploughed, and clattered along the warping boardwalks, in merry pairs and groups, finding the work far more varied and amusing than the endless repetition in one household. They had pleasant evenings too, with plenty of callers, albeit somewhat checked and chilled by rigorous Mrs. James.
"It is both foolish and wicked!" said Madam Weatherstone to her daughter-in-law, "Exposing a group of silly girls to such danger and temptations! I understand there is singing and laughing going on at that house until half-past ten at night."
"Yes, there is," Viva admitted. "Mrs. James insists that they shall all be in bed at eleven—which is very wise. I'm glad they have good times—there's safety in numbers, you know."
"There will be a scandal in this community before long!" said the old lady solemnly. "And it grieves me to think that this household will be responsible for it!"
Diantha heard all this from the linen