My prediction was fulfilled. Arthur Tamworth did not appear at the office. Instead, he telephoned from his house, that, owing to a slight indisposition, he would remain at home for the day. The clerks were mystified, as Mr. Tamworth had never been known to absent himself from his business. To me, of course, it was clear as a pikestaff and grimly I declined to discuss the matter with the bookkeeper. I had an odiously guilty feeling, and in the matter of "secrets" it seemed to me that I could give Lady Audley points. The day dragged horribly. I was weighted down by my dreary knowledge, and as I sat at my desk, the various courses of our distinctly coarse and brutal dinner passed before my mind in lugubrious procession. I felt as Mathias must have done in The Bells with the odious souvenir of the lime-kiln on his conscience. However, in exultant optimism, I argued that this little "set-back" already belonged to the past, and I resolved to keep Tamworth's pitiful plight from Letitia, unless he died, victim of my hospitality. By the time I reached our apartment "Sh!" said Letitia mysteriously, with a finger on her lips, as we went to the drawing-room, "I've got her, Archie. She's in the kitchen preparing dinner, and—and—you'll never guess, dear, so I may as well tell you the news. She—she used to be with the Vanderbilts!" My wife was all excitement. There was a flush on her face, and I had never seen her look prettier. She was dressed for dinner, in still another evening gown, all white. There were forget-me-nots in her hair, and at her bosom. Letitia spoke in a whisper, as though she were afraid that a mere voice would startle the latest acquisition. Her enthusiasm, however, was contagious, and as she followed me to my dressing-room, where I quickly exchanged my business clothes for discreet broadcloth, I began to share her gay anticipation. "Yes," she continued eagerly, "I went to the intelligence office and subscribed. At first, Archie, I felt most mortified. A dozen servant girls sat there, like at a minstrel show. They seemed to be quite lacking in old-fashioned respect and were not a bit Letitia reddened and seemed to forget her present satisfaction in the thought of her recent humiliation. She went on: "Fortunately, I was not the only one who needed a cook. At least fifty ladies were there, looking strangely desperate. One of them spoke to me, most impertinently, I thought. She was a stout matron and she said to me, very rudely: 'Is this your first time in hell?' I didn't answer her, and she smiled and passed on. I heard her tell the proprietress of the office that she had a bicycle with a coaster brake, that she was willing, if necessary, to place at the disposal of her cook, but that, personally, she would prefer a cook who played the piano. I also heard her say that she, herself, would do all the work for two hours each morning while cook practised." "Was it a lunatic asylum, or an intelligence office?" I asked, as I knotted my tie. "Oh, it really was an intelligence office," Letitia "Come, Letitia," I said impatiently, "I dare say you mean to be funny, but I do hope, dear, that you are not going to develop a sense of humor. You know my views on that subject." "But, Archie, this is all true. It is, honest Injun. I am as much mystified as you are. I thought I was dreaming, or at the theater. I couldn't realize that it was genuine. Fortunately for me, Mrs. Jones attended to me immediately. Just after I had heard the conversation about the Metropolitan Opera House on Wagner nights, an old, rather melancholy looking person came in. Mrs. Jones jumped up and said: 'Here's the very thing for you, Mrs. Fairfax.' And before I knew it, I was on my way home with a cook "So I should judge," I murmured. "Potzenheimer! Good gracious, Letitia!" "What does the name matter, you silly boy? That which we call a Potzenheimer, etcetera. Think of our luck, dear. On the way home, I remembered Aunt Julia's suggestion always to ask for references. I had quite forgotten all about it, stupid-like. Mrs. Potzenheimer looked very sad and weary, poor soul. She told me that Mrs. Vanderbilt would be delighted to give her a reference, but that at present she was in England, visiting the Duchess of Marlborough." I'm not a snob, not a bit of one. I'm a democrat to the roots of my hair. Still, as this reflected glory shed itself upon me, I felt a strange sense of elation. "Which of the Vanderbilts was it?" I asked. "How provoking you are, Archie!" exclaimed Letitia impatiently. "Isn't any Vanderbilt good enough for us—to get a cook from? Suppose it were Alfred, or Reginald, or William K. Vanderbilt. What difference does it make? I was so overjoyed that I felt positively pleased to hear that Mrs. Vanderbilt was with the Duchess of Marlborough. If she had been here I should have deemed it my duty to call upon her "There is something in what you say, old girl," I was bound to assent. "If you think so, dear, I am quite satisfied," Letitia responded readily. "But there is one thing about Mrs. Potzenheimer—by-the-by, she suggests that we call her Nellie—that troubles me. She says she never wants to go out." "And that troubles you!" I exclaimed, astonished. "I should think you would be rejoiced. We shall feel so much safer in the knowledge that Mrs. Potzen—Nellie—is always in the kitchen." "But it is so sad, Archie," persisted Letitia. "When I asked her what night she would like to go out, she burst out crying. She said she had nowhere to go—that she was old, and that nobody cared for her. She wept for ten minutes, and I think—I'm not sure, Archie—that I joined her. Poor old soul! My first impulse was to ask her to come in and sit with us—" "Letitia!" "I said 'my first impulse,'" she went on firmly. "I never act on first impulses, and I did not do so this "But there are none in New York, dear." "You needn't be so disgustingly literal, Archie," Letitia protested with a pout. "I say that it is a pity she can't pass her days in a little cottage with honeysuckle all over it, and with her grandchildren grouped around her knee." "Is she so fearfully old?" I asked in alarm. "One needn't be disgracefully antique to have grandchildren," my wife declared. "You are so old-fashioned, dear. You revel in pictures of white-haired, toothless, old creatures when you hear of grandmothers. If my grandmother were alive to-day she would be just fifty-three. She married at sixteen." "They always do, nowadays," I retorted cynically. "Hush!" cried Letitia, for at that moment Mrs. Potzenheimer came in to tell us that dinner was served. Most aged and infirm was Mrs. Potzenheimer, and I looked at her in amazement. She was slightly lame and her face was wizened and pinched. Her eyes filled with tears as she told us that dinner was ready. I had felt ravenously hungry, but the sight of the new domestic nipped my pangs. Not being wholly bad, a feeling of compassion took possession of me. A horrid idea that I should be waiting on cook, instead of cook waiting on me, almost overwhelmed me. Our places were laid, but the table had no other decoration than a bottle of Worcestershire sauce on a little mat in the middle. Never have I seen a bottle of Worcestershire look so funereally lonely. Robinson Crusoe on his desert island was a crowd in comparison. We sat down, depressed and gloomy. I felt that like the dove on the mast—in the song—I must "mourn, and mourn, and mourn." "I wonder if this table decoration is a duplicate of Mrs. Vanderbilt's," I murmured, as I unfolded my table-napkin. "It is strange," Letitia agreed, in a whisper. "I "Perhaps there are some tenement-house Vanderbilts," I suggested moodily. "I told you, Archie," Letitia insisted, "that the Mrs. Vanderbilt who employed Nellie is at present visiting the Duchess of Marlborough at Blenheim Castle, so that settles it. She particularly said Blenheim Castle." Mrs. Potzenheimer brought in a seething dish of mutton stew, that emitted a fragrant odor. She set it down with a heavy sigh. I noticed a tear trickling down her cheek, and so did Letitia, for I saw my wife's face grow serious. It was very good stew, indeed. If we could have called it a ragoÛt, we should have felt more at ease. It was a stew, however, and, with the best of intentions, it was impossible even to think of it as anything else. "She is much older than you implied, Letitia," I said, as cook limped out of the room and we began dinner. "She really seems positively decrepit." Letitia sat looking at her food rather wistfully. "It is the electric light, I think," she whispered—the constant whispering made me nervous—"I admit, Archie, that she looks twenty years older, lighted up. "Well, dear,"—I was growing cheerful in the material comfort of the moment,—"we don't force her to do it. She evidently wanted a position, or you wouldn't have found her at the intelligence office." "She was crying when she brought in the stew." Letitia's lip quivered ominously. "Why should she cry?" I asked with asperity—I carefully turned on the asperity in order to combat Letitia's weakness. "Why should she cry? She naturally expects to cook. It can't be a surprise to her. She must know that she isn't here just as an ornament, or—" "You are so hard, Archie," Letitia faltered. "You can sit there and enjoy a dinner cooked by a poor old soul. Of course, I'm glad you enjoy it. It is better so. But still—I can't touch it. She has unnerved me. She must be thinking of her loved ones." "You said she hadn't any." "I didn't!" cried Letitia indignantly. "I said nothing of the sort. I said she ought to be with her grandchildren, and so she ought. I dare say she has dozens of grandchildren. Germans always have. It "Do try and eat, Letitia," I urged. "You make me feel so greedy. Don't be angry, dear, but don't you think it's a bit far-fetched? You engage a cook with your eyes open, and then you won't touch the food she prepares because she is old. She was just as old this morning." "It isn't her age exactly," Letitia explained hesitantly, "but I can't bear to see a human being in tears. Who are we that we should distress a nice old woman so poignantly? What right have we to do it?" I did not answer, for I thought that Letitia was a trifle exaggerated. However, she made a brave effort to dine, and being young and healthy, I was glad to notice that the succulent stew overcame her sentimental regrets. I fancy that she felt a little better after she had partaken of nourishment. Still, it was with great reluctance that she rang the bell, and as Mrs. Potzenheimer ambled in, Letitia was distinctly nervous. We tried to talk lightly during the removal of the dishes, but it was impossible. Mrs. Potzenheimer's eyes were suffused and she sighed stertorously. It was a long time before she emerged from "If she did that in Mrs. Vanderbilt's house," I said sternly, "no wonder that lady has fled to the Duchess of Marlborough, and to rice puddings minus thumbs." "I fail to see that there is anything particularly criminal in a thumb," Letitia retorted. "It is not the thumb of an outsider. She made the pudding herself with her own hands and thumbs. Don't be so exasperating, Archie. Oh, yes, I know that it isn't nice, and that it's very bad form. But I shan't tell her about it. I'm not going to add to her burden. Evidently, she feels her position—" "And our rice pudding—" "—very acutely. She seems to me like a woman who has known better days. Probably the Vanderbilts treat their inferiors very badly. There is nothing like the insolence and the superciliousness of people It was no use arguing. I went to the drawing-room, discontentedly enough, and broke the rules of the house by smoking there. It was with Letitia's permission, to be sure, but I felt uneasy. It was the thin end of the wedge, and I hated to think of the whole wedge. My nerves were on edge and I could settle to nothing. I kept fancying I heard Mrs. Potzenheimer sobbing, and Letitia soothing her, with a "There now!" Even the unsatisfied yearning sensation that had succeeded Anna Carter's delicatessen dinner was better than this. We seemed to have engaged trouble, at big wages, and the thought was maddening. If Letitia Potzenheimered every night after dinner, what would become of me, I selfishly wondered. Of course, I had my Lives of Great Men, but just at present mere greatness "riled" me. The very thought of greatness evaporated in reflections upon Mrs. Potzenheimer. The clock struck nine, and still I sat smoking in solitary silence. I picked up Letitia's Cicero, open I shut the book with a bang. In sudden irritation I wondered how Letitia could read such rubbish. Yes, rubbish, I asserted in mental indignation. Thank goodness that my wife didn't hear me, and that nobody heard me. My mood was surely no excuse for an insult hurled at the sacred memory of Cicero, amiably addressing Titus Pomponius Atticus. How could Letitia toboggan from Cicero to Mrs. Potzenheimer? It was just ten o'clock when my wife joined me. She looked very tired and I saw that she had been weeping. This touched me, and the hasty words that my lips had formed remained unsaid. "She is asleep," said Letitia gently. "She literally cried herself to sleep, Archie. I insisted that she should go to bed and let me take her in a little dinner. She managed to eat some stew and some rice pudding. Her appetite was really good. In fact"—with a smile "she ate more than both of us together. But I fancy she did it to please me. She saw that I was genuinely distressed." "You shouldn't have let her see it, Letitia," I protested. "How could I help it?"—reproachfully. "She told me a good deal about herself. She has no grandchildren. Don't interrupt, Archie. She has no grandchildren for the very good reason that she had no children. She was married many years, but never had—anything! Isn't it odd, dear, for a German? She always had to earn her own living. She was a nurse girl at seven. How sad to think of it!" "What did she say about the Vanderbilts?" I repeat that I am not a snob, but one can't help being curious. "She doesn't like to talk about them, Archie. I don't know why. I imagine that they must be very hard to get along with. But she did say that the Duchess of Marlborough was crazy to take her to England. However, she wouldn't go; she was too old, she said, and then she wept bitterly. She asked me a lot of questions about the people in the house—which, of course, I couldn't answer. And although she has only been here a few hours, and has been crying most of the time, she seems to have struck up an acquaintance with Mrs. Archer's cook below. While I was in the kitchen, Mrs. Archer's cook called up the dumb-waiter. I heard her say: 'What cheer?' "What a horrid expression!" I exclaimed. "Nellie seemed rather perturbed when she noticed that I had heard her," Letitia went on, "and explained that she had met Mrs. Archer's cook at the intelligence office. She didn't allude to the expression she used. When she was in bed she called for a little whisky, and I gave her some." "Letitia, you shouldn't—" "She hated it, Archie," said Letitia, with a wry face. "She told me that it positively went against her, but that she took it for her heart. She has a weak heart, dear. She drank half a tumblerful, as she says it always puts her on her feet again after one of these little attacks." "I don't like it, Letitia," I remarked suspiciously. "I don't like it at all." Letitia smiled and kissed me. "Of course you don't, you silly old boy," she said lightly, "you've been left alone, and I'm glad you don't like it. I should be vexed if you did. Did-ems leave-ems all alone-ems? But one must do a little good in the world, Archie. Suppose you were ill in a strange place, wouldn't you be grateful to anybody who tried to make you comfortable? "You are a foolish girl, Letitia," I declared, mollified in spite of myself. "But if we are going to start a Home for the Aged—" "Stop it, Archie. Now, stop it. You mustn't be harsh and unreasonable. What happened to-night will probably never happen again. Would you like me if I were hard-hearted, and cold-blooded? Think of Nellie as though she were your own grandmother." "Why should I, Letitia?" I asked impatiently, wound up again. "I've been trying to think of her as my cook. That is all I bargained to do. It is not likely that I should engage my own grandmother—" "Oh, you are so cross—so cross!" sighed Letitia; "I have never seen you so disagreeable. After all, Archie, you are a great big baby. You are vexed because I left you alone for a few moments." "An hour and a half!" "An hour and a half? Was it really so long? It couldn't have been. Well, perhaps it was. Anyway, I'm glad you missed me. It is a consolation. I missed you, dear. It wasn't at all amusing waiting on a lachrymose old woman, plying her with drink and tucking her up in bed. It was really most objectionable, |