I, too, obeyed her. I stated the case in firm language. He apologized, he grovelled. It was all a mistake (Mary sniffed); the man had no such orders (Mary snorted). I could send a cheque at my leisure, and if I would permit him to speak to his henchman all would be well. I handed the receiver to a very cowed and surly man, whom Mary persistently addressed as "Major." As he turned from the telephone, Mary surveyed him with twinkling eyes. "Are you going to turn off our electric light, Major?" she said, laughing at him. To my surprise, he laughed with her. Tradespeople always did. "Not to-day," he said as amiably as though she had been entertaining him at tea. Then she let him out, and went back to her dusting. She looked at me compassionately. "It's the way that dummed company takes to get people to pay their deposits promptly," she said. "But trust Mary Jane Few Clothes to get ahead of a little trick like that! My, Missis, isn't it hot!" I went back to my letter-writing feeling somewhat pensive. It was clear that we had a competent person in the kitchen, and as for myself it would not disturb me in the least if she managed me, provided she dealt as peremptorily with the housework as she handled any other difficult proposition. But with the Angel? I was not very well acquainted with my husband myself, and I was slightly exercised as to whether he would bow his neck to Mary's yoke as meekly as I intended to do or not. I seemed to feel intuitively that Mary was a great and gallant general in the domestic field, and my mother's thirty years' war with incompetent servants made me yearn to close my lips as hermetically as an army officer's and blindly obey my general's orders with an unquestioning confidence that the battle would be won by her genius. If it were lost, then it would be my turn to interfere and criticize and show how affairs should have been managed. But men, as a rule, have no such intuition, and I wondered about the Angel. How little I knew him! I was arranging the flowers for the table when the Angel came home. When he had gone back to dress, Mary came up to me and in a confidential way said: "Missis, dear, don't tell your father about the electric light till after dinner,--excuse me for putting in my two cents, but I always was nosey!" "Tell my father?" I repeated. My father was in Washington. "Boss! Mr. Jardine!" explained Mary. "Why did you call him my father? Surely you must know--" "Pardon me, dear child. I always call him your father when I'm talking to myself, because nobody but your father could be as careful of you as that dear man!" I sat down to laugh. "You don't believe much in husbands, then?" I said.