ucy secured “a girl” at last. The girl called herself “a girl,” the registry office keeper called her “a girl,” and Lucy said within herself that she could not very well call her anything else. What else was she? She had not the appearance or manner of the trained servant. She gave no sign of the habits or nature which Lucy would have rejoiced over in “a maid.” She was “a girl,” ready to do work for a wage. She was but a bundle of negations. Yet Lucy felt bound to take her, not only because time pressed, but because there was really no reason why she should reject her.

The girl gave “a reference” to a house not very far from Pelham Street. She had been servant there for two years. So Lucy locked up the little house with the verandah, took Hugh by the hand, and went off to inquire “the character” of “Jane Smith.”

The house at which her journey ended was dismally dim and genteel. It was not dirty or neglected, but it was not bright nor cared for. Jane Smith herself opened the door. It was the last day of her “notice” month.

The lady who received Mrs. Challoner was a limp faded personage who listened to Lucy’s errand with such unsmiling weariness that Lucy felt quite sorry to have disturbed her.

“Oh, Jane Smith? Well, Jane Smith is very fair—as servants go nowadays. I think she has been with me two years. She gave me notice herself. I forget why, really—some trifle it was. I thought it may be as well—for when they stay too long in one place they get careless.”

“I don’t think two years is very long, and they ought to grow more valuable the longer they stay,” said Mrs. Challoner.

“Oh, yes, of course they should, but they don’t. Two years is a very reasonable time as things are nowadays.”

“And you found her perfectly honest and truthful and reliable?” asked Lucy, who somehow felt shy in making these inquiries. It seemed to her queer that the mere fact that our servants require to earn their bread in our houses, should entitle one to ask searching questions about them such as we never ask before admitting acquaintances to our society!

“Honest? Yes, I have no reason to think her otherwise. I never missed anything, and any outlays she made always seemed correct. Truthful? Well, I never ask my servants questions, I make a point of that. I form my own conclusions about anything that happens. Reliable? Reliable?”—the lady echoed those words with significant notes of interrogation and exclamation—“I scarcely know how far you mean that word to go. I found no fault with her. I never care to get acquainted with my servants. If they do their work and give me no cause for displeasure that is enough for me.”

There was an awkward pause.

“Do you know anything about Jane Smith’s own people?” asked Lucy.

The lady shook her head.

“No,” she replied. “I have never found it necessary to make any inquiries. I allow no visitors. I give my servants one half-day off every week, but I don’t give it always on a regular day. I think that is a good plan. They get out on Sunday evening, when I expect them to go to the pew which I occupy in the morning. I think that is giving them every opportunity to be steady and respectable if they desire to be so.” The mistress herself prepared to show Mrs. Challoner to the door. She checked herself, however, to ask if her visitor would like to see Jane then or to have a call from her that evening, and Lucy accepted the latter alternative.

Three hours later Jane Smith came up to Mrs. Challoner’s house to hear the result of the inquiries about her. Lucy resolved to have a little conversation with the girl, to see if she could discover any bit of genuine human nature beneath the professional automaton which was all that her last mistress had required. Indeed she felt she must learn something more about the girl than that mistress had ever known.

“Do you belong to London?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” answered Jane with a slight hesitancy, for which it seemed hard to account. Could some mistress have raised an objection to country girls?

“To what part of the country do you belong?” Lucy went on.

“I didn’t belong to the country, ma’am,” she said. “I’ve always lived in a town. I come from Hull.”

“Oh, I understand,” Lucy replied. “Have you any relatives or friends in London?”

Again the curious hesitancy.

“No relatives here, ma’am.”

Lucy began to think she understood.

“Nor any friends?” she pressed. “No friends at all? Are you engaged to be married or likely to be so?”

Jane Smith’s expression changed.

“Well, yes, ma’am,” she admitted.

“And does the young man live in London?”

“If you please, yes, ma’am.”

“Do your people know him?” Lucy persisted.

Jane Smith looked at her timidly.

“They’ve never seen him yet, ma’am. He hopes to go down there with a cheap trip next Easter. It’s a long way for poor folks.”

“If this is a real serious love affair, Jane—no mere silly flirting, I shall give you leave to let him come to see you once a week,” said Lucy.

“Thank you, ma’am,” answered Jane.

Then for the first time in the whole interview she volunteered a remark.

“The last mistress—the one you saw—she didn’t allow followers. That was why I gave her notice.”

“But she might have made a concession if you had asked her specially,” Lucy remarked, with a laudable desire to be loyal to her own order. “You did not do so?” she added interrogatively.

Jane Smith shook her head.

“’Twouldn’t have been no use, ma’am,” she answered decidedly. “Three weeks running my evening out had been pouring with rain, but she took me up sharp because she saw me speaking to him for a minute or two at the area gate one morning.”

“Well, naturally mistresses are particular concerning who comes about their houses,” Lucy answered staunchly. “Your mistress said she had no fault to find with you. She told me you had dismissed yourself. Have you known the young man long?”

“More than a year, ma’am. He’s a carpenter working in Messrs. Muggeridge’s shop”—she named a large place of business about midway between her former situation and Mrs. Challoner’s house.

“Well, Jane, I decide to engage you, and after a week or two, if all goes rightly, he may come to see you once a week. Carpenters get away from their work rather early, so all that I shall ask is that he never stays later than nine o’clock, when you bring up my supper tray. And I am sure you will take care I shall never regret giving you this permission.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Jane. “Please, ma’am, you never shall.” She seemed to take her new form of bliss very sedately.

Then a sudden thought struck Lucy. She remembered the speed of Pollie’s wooing.

“You are not thinking of getting married very soon, I suppose?”

“Oh, dear, no, ma’am,” answered Jane. “His wage will have to rise a bit. He’s got to do something for his mother.”

“You can understand that I shouldn’t like you to come into my service merely to go out of it again,” observed Lucy. But her silent reflection was that household regulations which prevent a comfortable courtship must surely do much to promote regardless, rash, improvident marriage.

“No, ma’am, I’ve no such thought,” said Jane soberly.

“Then can you enter on your duties to-morrow?” asked Mrs. Challoner rather anxiously, for to-morrow was the last day of the old year, and New Year’s Day falling on Sunday, St. George’s Institute would open on Monday, though duties there might not be very stringent for a day or two later.

“Oh, yes, ma’am,” answered Jane, with more vivacity than she had shown over her love affairs. “For my time is up to-morrow morning, and it costs a girl a good deal if she has to pay for board and lodging between her places.”

So Jane Smith in a cab, with a big brown box, duly arrived on Friday about noon. She was soon installed in her duties, and when Mrs. Brand arrived to pay her sister a call on the last day of the year, Jane “opened the door” with the dull propriety of one who has done it for months. Mrs. Brand was startled.

“What! Is the prodigy gone?” she exclaimed as Jane showed her into the parlour, “or have you hired a girl to help her? Lucy, that would be a brilliant idea, for the poor old thing is too old for running about, and yet I suppose she is a good figure-head for you to leave at home, when you are to be so much away. I always said you ought to have two. You’ve done too much servant’s work.”

Lucy drew her sister within the parlour.

“I have not two, certainly not,” she answered patiently, “but I had a terrible disappointment with Mrs. Morison, and she had to go. She drank.” Lucy spoke in the low impressive voice which marked her horror of the discovery.

Mrs. Brand laughed.

“Oh, I expected that,” she said. “It’s the commonest thing in London cooks. Yes, I know it’s very bad, but there are faults in everybody. She did cook well, Luce; I noticed that when I took a little supper with you, and I’ve said to Jem since what a comfort it was to me to know you were getting decent food. I don’t think you should have been so hard on her. What has become of your Christian charity? You might have told her that if it ever happened again, you would give her straight over to the police. That would have pulled her up and kept her in check for a time, and you would have got the good of her in the meantime. It’s too bad not to have had a little patience with a poor sinner. I’m shocked at you.”

“My dear Florence,” cried Lucy in dismay, “you think me uncharitable for discharging a servant for drunkenness and I have known you to dismiss one for burning a pudding!”

“Oh, that’s quite a different thing,” said Florence easily, “and I don’t know that I should have done that if it had not been that we had visitors, and I was very much put out.”

“It would have been all the same to me if I made my sad discovery in the strictest privacy,” observed Lucy, “but as it happened, I made it at my Christmas dinner time.”

Florence gave a curious deprecatory smile.

“Poor old Miss Latimer and that crippled man!” she exclaimed. “Surely they would not be very severe censors? You could have trusted them not to make much game of your mishap, and I should have thought it was quite in your province to have patience with a sinner and try to reform her.”

“It might have been,” returned Lucy, “had Charlie been at home, and had Charlie and I been alone together. But there is a time and a place for everything. No drunkard should be in any house where a child is, and I am left in charge of my husband’s property, and must not expose it to unnecessary risks. We must not do wrong as a beginning of doing good. That is the first step on a very slippery path.”

When Lucy got upon principles, Florence was generally silenced, not because she was convinced, but because she could not understand connecting practice with principle. With the latter, Florence never troubled herself. The former she directed by the expediency of the moment.

Presently she spoke again, with a change of subject.

“You got my note this morning, I suppose, Luce,” she said, “and you know what I’ve come for. Mrs. Bray is quite hurt at not having seen you for so long, and I promised to bring you ‘before the year was out.’ So this is your last chance.”

“It has not been my fault,” Lucy observed soberly. “Nor can I go with you this afternoon, Florence, unless Hugh can accompany us.”

Florence made a little grimace.

“Isn’t this girl respectable either?” she said. “Have you a written character with her too?”

“No,” Lucy answered. “But she is a perfect stranger. I cannot leave my child with her.”

“Very well, bring him along by all means. I own he is a credit to take out—not like my little monkeys—for he behaves prettily and obeys at a word. The dear old dame will be quite pleased to see him. She will say he is like the children of her youth, and that’s her highest praise. I daren’t take my girls; they would disgrace me in ten minutes.”

Lucy would have made the journey in an omnibus, but Florence called a cab. The visit involved going across London to a western district far beyond the solemn gloom of the region where Lucy had visited Dr. Ivery. The cab was not very pleasant, the presence of Hugh as a third having compelled them to take a four-wheeler, while otherwise Florence would have hired a dashing hansom.

“Such a fusty smell!” Florence cried. Then, in a few minutes more: “What a noise the windows make!” Next: “And we are crawling like snails. But it’s always the way with a ‘growler.’”

Lucy said nothing, but innocent Hugh administered a reproof.

“Are four-wheelers called ‘growlers,’ auntie, because they make people grumble?” he asked.

“Oh, you are too clever for anything, child!” said the auntie.

Hugh looked up astonished.

“It isn’t clever to want to know, is it?” he returned. “It’s clever when you do know.”

The cab stopped at last; but Florence would not dismiss it.

“Let it wait,” she said. “Mrs. Bray’s hot rooms will take so much out of me that I shall just want to drop into it when we come out.”

Of course, Lucy had nothing to do but consent. Florence often complained that Lucy held back from mutual expeditions. Little matters of this sort were at the root of Lucy’s reserve. Extravagances always went on which she would never dream of, and though Florence let none of their expense fall upon her, that was not pleasanter for Lucy, since it forced her to accept, as favours, indulgences and luxuries which seemed to her not only unnecessary, but even harmful for two young vigorous women.

The exterior of the house they entered differed little from other pretty residences of its fashionable little quarter, nestled down beside the most aristocratic of our London parks. But once within the door, the house had a character all its own. The pretty little entrance hall was cut across by a broad flight of steps leading to an upper hall, whence the public rooms opened. Of the walls of this upper hall scarcely a quarter of a yard of the middle part remained visible, being thickly covered with old and rare engravings and prints, the interstices between pictures of varied size being filled by bits of blue china and other curios. Even the portion approaching the ceiling was decorated, though more sparsely, by ancient weapons and shields.

A ladylike maid with a pale, tired face admitted them, and led them straight into Mrs. Bray’s presence.

Mrs. Bray was almost the last of the friends of the mother of Florence and Lucy. What was more, she had been that lady’s ideal. The sisters had heard their mother praise her with a warmth in which she had seldom clothed her commendations. They had seen their mother sitting beside Mrs. Bray actually holding her hand! As they advanced to greet their old friend, Lucy remembered the astonishment with which that sight had filled her girlish breast—astonishment, not at Mrs. Bray’s power to charm, but at her mother’s self-surrender to it.

For this was a wonderful old lady. One felt at once that one was in presence of a personality. She rose very slightly to greet them, for she was both aged and feeble. Yet there was something in gesture and countenance which gave assurance of warmest welcome.

“My dear Florence, sit down there where I can look at you, and peep into the world of modern fashion. And my little Lucy, my little truant Lucy, come and sit on this low chair at my side—the very chair your mother always used, my child.”

Immediately the one guest was flattered and the other was gratified, and each was put upon the best footing possible with each nature.

“Ah, but there is a third visitor!” cried the old lady, beaming down on Hugh. “Oh, my dear Lucy, this child is so like both your father and your husband! Look, your father’s strong chin to the very life, and your husband’s kind, laughing eyes! Yes, Lucy, and it is you that have thus moulded two good men into one. Now where is this young man to sit? I know he wants to sit close beside mamma, and he shall have this little stool; and there he is, a knight at the feet of his queen. And now, Florence, how are Mr. Brand and the daughters?”

“Jem is quite well, thanks,” said Florence. “He sends his dutiful regards and best wishes for the New Year. He would have come himself but he is so busy.”

As a matter of fact, Jem had not heard or uttered the old lady’s name for months, did not know that his wife was visiting her, and had himself gone that afternoon to Wimbledon for a game of golf.

Mrs. Bray laughed gaily.

“I expected you both this afternoon,” she said. “I remembered your promise to bring Lucy before the year was out. So I put aside a bit of china for Mr. Brand to take away with him. Oh, a trifle, my dear, very awkward in shape and very heavy! I’ll not think of troubling you with it, but it’s the kind I know he likes, and it can wait till he comes for it. But I tell you, Florence, I must give myself the pleasure of showing you the dress Mr. Bray has given me for the great dinner-party to-morrow, when we dine with the Lord Chief Justice. I’m sure you like to see pretty frocks—you have such pretty ones yourself.” She rang the bell while she spoke, and the genteel, tired maid came in.

“Rachel, bring down my dinner-dress again. I’m afraid you’ve just got it put away? But I must have it down again, please!” and the maid went off.

“I’d just been showing it to an old friend,” Mrs. Bray explained. “But she made me cross by asking whether I was not afraid of a dinner-party for my rheumatism. A memento mori, my dears. But,” she said, turning to Lucy, “here’s a grave face saying to itself that I am a foolish and naughty old woman to care for such frivolities!”

“Oh, no!” protested Lucy. “I was only so sorry that the maid had just put it nicely away.”

“It is all in her duty,” said the old lady with a dash of hauteur. “Rachel is here to do what she is told. It need not matter to her what that is.” Then, as the maid entered with the magnificent robe flung over her arm, the stately old dame gave her instructions how to spread it over an ottoman so as to display its costly lace and elaborate embroidery to the best advantage.

Mrs. Brand exclaimed with admiration, adjusting the folds, and fingering the soft fabric as a connoisseur in its perfections.

Mrs. Bray had drawn Lucy’s hand into her lap, and was stroking it softly.

“Ah, my dear,” she said, “don’t be hard on me for my vanity! Wait till you’ve been married fifty years yourself, and your husband brings you such a dress, and tells you that he does not think anybody but you would do it justice! Think of that, my dear! I see that sweet speech written between all the flounces and furbelows. How can you expect me to keep my eyes off such finery as that?”

“It is very beautiful!” murmured Lucy. But the old lady knew that her real answer was in the quivering clasp of the hand lying in her own.

“How would you like to see mamma in such a dress as that, Hugh?” asked Mrs. Brand.

Hugh gave his head a quaint little shake, as if such an idea was very grand; but he added—

“I shouldn’t be able to sit on her knee.”

“Ah, but you’ll be a grown-up man before your mamma will deserve such a dress!” answered the old lady archly. “Ay, my dear,” she whispered aside to Lucy, “if my little ones had lived to give me grandchildren and great-grandchildren to come crowding round me, maybe I should not have cared so much for this dress, and maybe, too, Mr. Bray would not have been able to afford to give it to me.”

“I’m glad to see Rachel is still with you!” said Mrs. Brand, as the maid once more took away the gorgeous garment. “I remember hearing something about her being engaged to be married, and, as I didn’t see her the last time I was here—it was at a reception, so I could not ask questions—I thought maybe the event had come off.”

Mrs. Bray shook her head.

“No,” she said, “the event has not come off—it will not come off. The man is dead—died in India. He was a non-commissioned officer, you know. I daresay it is all for the best for Rachel. I tell her so. He had been away more than three years, and, as I say to her, who knows what habits he may have acquired. A change of service would have been very trying to me. Now I daresay we shall rub on together to the end, and Rachel can trust us to provide for her. She’s generally very sensible, poor thing, and reasonable. I’ve never had to put my foot down firmly but once, which was when he went to India, and she wanted to wear a ring he gave her. A decent enough ring—nothing but engraved gold—it would have done for her keeper-ring if they had ever got married. But, of course, I could not allow such a thing, and she fretted a little—it was after he had gone—and she gave me notice, and said she should take a place in a shop. Then she got letters from him, and I think he advised her to stay in the place where he had left her.”

“She knew where she was well off,” interpolated Mrs. Brand.

“Very likely he did not want it on his conscience that she had given up a snug place for his ring. If he had ever wanted to change his mind, it would have made things harder for him. I think he was a decent, considerate sort of man,” the old lady went on. “At any rate, Rachel stayed. It is a little depressing for me now, always seeing her sad face. I gave her a holiday for a while, hoping she’d come back all right. But really her face seems set that way, and perhaps it does not mean that she feels so much as it looks.”

“It is not pleasant to have grieving people about,” assented Florence. “It is very kind of you to be so patient and forbearing. But, then, you have such a big and tender heart.”

“No, I haven’t,” said the old lady calmly. “I know better than that. At any rate, you don’t know that I have,” she added with a brisk change of manner; “for, if I have, I keep it so close shut up that I quite forget it, and it is in danger of being starved, like naughty children’s pet canaries. But it gives a little chirp sometimes. I am sorry for Rachel, and that’s why I like to fancy the man wouldn’t have turned out well, and that’s why I’ve given her all my black silk dresses. The cook says he’s had ‘noble mournings, such as the likes of he couldn’t have expected.’ She says, too, that Rachel wears that ring tied round her neck. That’s rank idolatry! But I suppose they have some feelings like ours. When I’m gone people will find among my treasures queer cuttings out of newspapers and tags of old programmes that they’ll wonder over. And must you really be going, my dears? So soon? A cab waiting! Fie! Is that the way to treat an old friend? Give my love to your husband when you write to him,” she said, drawing down Lucy’s face and kissing it fondly, “and tell him we dine with the Lord Chief Justice on New Year’s Day—it’s in his own professional line, you know—and that he is to come home and follow in our footsteps, especially in Mr. Bray’s when he bought me that dress! And good-bye, little man! And there’s a nice, weeny, tiny coin to remember an old woman by. And you’re not to show it to mamma till you are out of this house. And good-bye, Florence”—with a little peck of a kiss. “And keep Jem up to the mark in sending pretty messages. Tell him about the china. No, no, you sha’n’t take it! Ladies didn’t carry parcels for gentlemen in my young days. Good-bye, all!”

There was weary Rachel waiting in the hall. Lucy could not pass her without a word—it was a habit of hers never to pass a servant without some friendly recognition. Instinctively she said—

“Thank you. I wish you a good New Year!”

The worn face flashed into tenderness. And the door closed upon it so.

(To be continued.)