I am to have here in the village, I find, many a rebuke for habits of mine which lag behind my theories. For though I try to solve my share of a tragic question by giving to my Swedish maid, Elfa, the self-respect and the privilege suited to a human being dependent on me, together with ways of comfort and some leisure, yet I find the homely customs of the place to have accomplished more than my careful system. And though, when I took her from town I scrupulously added to the earnings of my little maid, I confess that it had not occurred to me to wonder whether or not she would like Friendship Village. We seem so weary-far from the conditions which we so facilely conceive. Especially, I seem far. I am afraid that I engaged Elfa in the first place with less attention to her economic fitness than that she is so trim and still and wistful, with such a peculiarly winning upward look; and that her name is Elfa. I told my neighbour that I did not know yet, whether Elfa would like it here or not; and for refuge I found fault with the worms on the rose bushes. Also I made a note in my head to ask Elfa how she likes the country. But the spirit of a thing is flown when you make a note of it in your head. How does Elfa like the town, for that matter? I never have asked her this, either. "She'll be getting married on your hands, anyway," my neighbour observed; "the ladies here say that's one trouble with trying to keep a hired girl. They _will_ get married. But I say, let 'em." At least here is a matter in which my theory, like that of my neighbour's, outruns those of certain folk of both town and village. For I myself have heard women complain of their servants marrying and establishing families, and deplore this shortsightedness in not staying where there is "a good home, a nice room, plenty to eat, and all the flat pieces sent to the laundry." "Speaking of books," said my neighbour, "have you seen Nicholas Moor?" "I see almost no new books," I told her guiltily. "Me either," she said; "I don't mean he's a book. He's a boy. Nicholas Moor--that does a little writin' himself? I guess you will see him. He'll be bringin' some of his writing up to show you. He took some to the new school principal, I heard, and to the invalid that was here from the city. He seems to be sort of lonesome, though he _has_ got a good position. He's interested in celluloid and he rings the Catholic bell. Nicholas must be near thirty, but he hasn't even showed any signs." "Signs?" I hazarded. "Of being in love," she says simply. And I have pondered pleasantly on this significant ellipsis of hers which takes serenely for granted the basic business of the world. Her elision reminds me of the delicate animism of the Japanese which says, "When the rice pot speaks with a human voice, then the demon's name is Kanjo." One can appraise a race or an individual by the class of things which speech takes for granted, love or a demon or whatever it be.