Fortunately, on Friday morning the postman brought me a letter from the housekeeper at Sutton House enclosing a railroad ticket. When I told Alice that I had engaged to go as head chambermaid she rose in wrath. A domestic servant in a hotel was bad enough, she protested, but going in a private family was a disgrace for which she could not find a name. “Yet when you are at home you make beds, sweep the floors, and do other so-called menial work,” I reminded her. “I’m a college woman,” she haughtily informed me. “If a lack of education in the worker renders the work disgraceful,” I replied, trying to argue with her, “then surely my degree together with my attainments as a writer should remove the stigma.” But she would not argue. It was disgraceful of me to go as a domestic servant. Nobody would ever have any respect for me, and that was all there was to it. It was the one subject to which there was but one side. Domestic service was disgraceful. This in the country that my ancestors had struggled to found—that all under its flag might be free and equal. CHAPTER VII FEMALES OF THE SPECIES The family at Sutton House comprised Mr. and Mrs. Sutton, both under thirty-five, their only child a boy eight years old, and his tutor, a young college man. The place was very beautiful. The house, Southern colonial, was large and dignified without being showy. The park and gardens surrounding it contained eleven acres—at least the chauffeur, who brought me from the station, so informed me. Certainly they were ample and perfectly kept. The trees were noticeably handsome, all of them indigenous. Though an unusually elaborate establishment for America, it was not an imitation. Perhaps its most striking feature was that it did not suggest England or any other foreign country. It looked to be just what it was—the country home of a well-bred American family of large fortune. The American atmosphere was so distinct that—watching the house as we approached along the wide drive, I had a subconscious expectation of seeing an old negro, immaculately dressed, make his appearance. He didn’t come. Nor when we passed near the stables and garage was there any sound of laughing or singing. At the side entrance I was met by the housekeeper, an Englishwoman. There were fifteen servants besides the men in the stables, in the garage, and the gardeners. Every one of them foreigners. “Why will Americans persist in surrounding themselves with indifferent foreign ‘help’ when they might have the best servants and most loyal Americans, for the asking?” was the question that I asked myself that night after my arrival at the Sutton House, and I am still asking it.