“Frieda--that is the pleasant girl who serves my breakfast when I take it in my room? Yes, she will do excellently,” approved Mrs. Cortlandt. “Will you kindly have her sent to me at once? Since Miss Beth’s maid is already at hand she may begin her duties now. Thank you, Mrs. Hodgman. I hope the change will not incommode you; it is troublesome to train a new--parlor maid, wasn’t Frieda?” “Yes, madam, but I am sure that the girl who will replace her comes with an excellent training,” said Mrs. Hodgman. “Frieda shall come to you at once, Mrs. Cortlandt.” Beth listened half in dismay. What should she do with a maid? Or, rather, what would the maid do to her? Yet, evidently, she was to have one, a whole maid of her own, precisely as if she were the Princess Elizabeth whom she often had played at being, at home in the old-fashioned garden! Mrs. Cortlandt opened a pile of personal letters which her secretary had laid on her table for this end. Beth was admiring the tiny jeweled blade that her aunt used, when Frieda knocked. “Ah, Frieda! yes,” said Mrs. Cortlandt. “You are to be my little niece’s new maid. I hope that you will serve her well. If you need instruction in your task go to Anna Mary for advice; she will guide you. Go with Miss Beth to her room now, and help her put on a blue gown which I brought home with me, and which has been sent up-stairs. There are ribbons, shoes, stockings with it, you will find. By the time she has been made ready her cousins will return from their ride, and will not be willing to wait longer to meet her. Come to me, Beth, here, after you are dressed. And, Frieda, there are a good many things coming for Miss Beth, an outfit more appropriate to town than the clothes that she wore in the country. When they are delivered please put them away in her wardrobes, and mark the underclothing with her initials, please. You understand lettering?” “Yes, madam; I was taught in Germany,” said Frieda. “Then well taught,” said Mrs. Cortlandt with her smile that won all who served her to serve her well. “Run away now with Frieda, Bethie dear, and come back to me as soon as she has made you from an outdoors girl into a little house-girl.” Beth went obediently. She was not sure which was her room, but Frieda led the way up-stairs to it directly, and Beth’s heart leaped again as she opened the door upon its beauty, now illumined by the long light of mid-afternoon, and the fire still burning on the hearth. “Could you sit there, Frieda, and let me sit here while you talk to me?” suggested Beth settling herself into the lowest and loveliest of the willow rockers before the fire. “You could sit there, Miss Beth, but I certainly couldn’t sit here,” said Frieda. “Even if it would be right--and it wouldn’t--I have to open these boxes and get out what your aunt wants you to wear this afternoon.” And Frieda rapidly began her work.