“Ah?” I replied, as my estimate of Mrs. Jefferson Davis’ judgment bounded upward. Living to be eighty has its compensations. Perhaps in time I may learn to distrust men who do not tread squarely on their heels. At dinner that evening the talk was more general than it had been at lunch. The entrance of Mrs. Bossman and Miss Pugh resulted in the same frosty atmosphere. Determined not to finish my meal staring at my plate while I shovelled down food, I fired question after question at the woman with red hair. Amused, and I believe not a little encouraged by my daring, she finally took hold and kept her end of the conversation going. During the balance of that meal we kept up a steady flow of talk, back and forth, across the table. Not another woman said a word. Even the matron and her assistant stopped whispering to each other. As I now recall it, that conversation included the heavens, the earth, and the waters under the earth. As we were leaving, the red-haired woman slipped her hand through my arm and whispered: “Come over to my cottage to-morrow when you finish your work. I’d like you to see my children. I have forty little girls.” It was after eleven o’clock the next day when I joined her. Her older girls were at school, and the little tots were playing in a sand-pile in the yard. She, seated on an upturned soap-box under the trees, was making tatting. Chatting with her I learned that she was Miss Jessup, and had an orphaned niece and nephew dependent on her. Having been a saleswoman in Chicago for years, she had, at length, broken away and come to New York, firm in her faith of “bettering” herself. “The stores were turnin’ off salespeople instead of takin’ ’em on,” she told me, speaking of her efforts to get a position in New York. “I was ’most on my uppers when I heard about this place. The pay ain’t so bad, and I just love children. Mrs. Bossman is new, you know. I don’t know how long she’ll keep me, but as long as she does”—her jaw squared—“I’m goin’ to see to it that my forty gets a square deal.” “Among so many I suppose there must be some of the mothers who do not understand the children in their care,” I questioned, with the same object that a fisherman throws out a baited hook. “No, they’re all right,” she assured me positively. “There isn’t one of them who doesn’t do her best with her cottage. An’ things ain’t as easy for us as it used to be, neither.” Here she glanced around, including the overlooking windows of her own cottage. Then she added: “Mrs. Bossman believes in what she calls lovin’ discipline. She got Miss Pugh here to carry out the discipline.” “Who carries out the loving?” She flashed a quick smile at me. She was an attractive woman. In spite of her grammar I believe she sprang from educated people.