The big Harrison villa,—with its broad ostentatious drive, its unsightly smear of cement bridge spoiling the green dip in the lawn, its elaborate superstructure which told of contractors' supplies bought at a dealers' reduction—soon became familiar to Daisy from its concrete cellar to its attic that resounded, mornings, with the virile thudding of young Harold's punching bag.

"Don't you ever put anything on a shelf, or hang anything up, or turn anything off?" she demanded, one morning, as, coming down from the top floor with her broom, she passed the door where the heir of the house of Harrison stood in his dressing-gown, combing back his thick black hair before a mirror.

"Whence the query, fair one?" said Harold, playfully.

"Well," said Daisy, stopping in the doorway with the roses of recent exertion coloring her cheeks superbly, her eyes dancing in their bright challenging way, and her plump arms displayed to fine and not unconscious advantage as she folded them over the broom-handle which leaned in the bend of her elbow; "one of your boxing-gloves was under the shower-bath, with the water running on it; and your sweater was on the floor below the punching bag, tramped in the dust——"

"There shouldn't be any dust up there," said Harold, easily; "What do you suppose we pay our little housemaids for? Uh?"

"Is that so!" retorted Daisy; "well, you'd better give orders for the wind not to blow, then; and you'd better have your father pull up that nasty concrete drive, where all the dust comes from; and——"

"See here! See-e here!" Sir Thomas Harrison's son jerked out, spinning on his heel and facing her; "what do you mean by talking to me like that? Who do you think you're speaking to—the chauffeur or the stable-boy? Get on downstairs, or wherever you're going, and don't have so much to say." Then, as the young heir of the place turned again to the mirror, he added in audible soliloquy, "dashed cheek! These infernal domestics are getting to think they can do and say what they please. Some of these days that cook and I are going to have a rumpus too. She chooses coolly to forget, and to keep right on forgetting, the instructions I give her about my food.—What! you here yet?"

"Yes!" said Daisy, looking at him with her cheeks burning redly and her eyes fixed and bright; "I'm here yet—Mister Harold!"

"Oh, a-all right," observed the young man, sarcastically, throwing out his palm with an elaborate motion toward a chair; "won't you have a seat, Miss—er—er— Miss Housemaid?"

Daisy's long eyelashes described a flashing arc as she swept the crown prince of the dynasty of Harrison from head to house-slippered toe. Then she turned away. Harold Harrison, as he heard her shoe-heels tapping smartly down the back stairs, grinned at his reflection in the looking-glass.

"That's putting 'em where they belong," he said; "Some kid, though, be-lieve me—some kid!"

Jean, at the big cooking range, heard Daisy come into the kitchen and thrust the broom into its holder with a rap. Then there came silence, enduring for so long that the Scotswoman glanced questioningly around. Daisy had dropped into a chair, and was sitting in a kind of brown study, finger at lip and eyes looking ponderingly out of window.

"Now, now, lassie!" said the cook, kindly; "it's nae business o' mine, likely; but this is a big hoose, an' ye canna be through reddin' up the rooms yet, an' it's nearly eleven o'clock. Is onything amiss?"

Daisy related her encounter with young Harrison.

"Ey, ey," Jean smiled grimly as the girl told her what young Harold had said about the cooking; "so he's no farin' quite as he wad at the meal-table, and would like a bit brush with me, would he? Well, I canna be aye getting' up special dishes for his lordship, so I may as weel prepare to receive him. Did he tell ye of the wee bit tiff we had ance before, him an' me? No; he didn't. Well, I'll tell ye, in a few words. He talked wi' his tongue, and I talked with the besom; and the interview juist lasted four minutes by the kitchen clock. He's no a bad lad althegither, but he needs a canny bit breakin' in."

"Well, I'm not going to bother breaking him in," said Daisy, lifting her chin, "he's not worth it."

Jean laughed. "Well, onyway," she said, turning again to her own work, "don't let him start ye broodin', so the rooms'll no be done when our good leddy goes over the huse. Ye ken weel she'd turn to and mak' up the beds hersel', sooner than raise a fuss. Lassie, lassie, speakin' about the Mistress, I'm sore worried. She's failed terrible this last month. I keep tellin' her to drink milk, but she canna keep it doon. She eats nae mair than yon dickie-bird—a great big strappin' wumman like she is—or was—too! If onything happens to the leddy o' the hoose here—guid-bye Harrisons! It's only for her sake I'm bidin' here, at the wage I get. I've got a standin' offer o' half as much agen from Lady Frances Ware—Sir William Ware's mother."

At the mention of Ware's name, Daisy gave a little involuntary start. But she did not tell Jean that she too had an offer of a position in the household of Sir William Ware.

"I suppose ye've no heard," said Jean, turning a protruding skillet-handle out of her way as she reached up for the flour-shaker, "that the young lad here—Harold—is engaged to a girl o' what they call the smart set. He's a takin' lad in some ways; but he's got Sir Thomas's way o' looking at marriage. It's nae good, Harrisons thinks, unless it brings social advantage. Ey, the conquest o' society is uphill work for puir Sir Tom.... By the bye, Sir Thomas himsel' is one person that, if onything happened our leddy, would not miss her much nor mourn for her long. Ey, he blames her, like, for 'keepin' him back'—her, that made him!"