With Ellen in her house it was unnecessary to count and to watch; unnecessary to fear that the children’s food might be insufficiently or badly cooked if she were out. Ellen liked to work, had a conscience about her work and a respect for it that was unusual, and she managed the other servants. Just as Cecily felt pride in her home and her children--felt instinctively that, even if domesticity were out of fashion, it was not rightly or permanently so--so Ellen felt her own pride in oiling the machinery of Cecily’s house. They liked each other and understood each other. And as Ellen watched the development of the children, saw Dorothea take her first steps and graduate from cream of wheat to scraped beef, helped little Leslie through the same formula of growth and watched and aided Cecily through their illnesses--a real friendship, more fundamental than many a one between so-called social equals, grew between the two women. It was the day after Dick had talked to Matthew with such unusual revelation. Cecily’s latest cook had proved herself in two days both insolent and incompetent and, hunting up the forwarding address for Ellen’s letters, Cecily decided to go to Ellen herself and see if in conversation they could not find a way to take care of the unwieldy relative and let Ellen come back to her. It struck her as she entered the apartment house that she had been here before and yet the cracked, painted walls of the hall were not familiar. She stood before the row of black tin mail boxes looking for Ellen’s name and saw it at last written in lead pencil on a printed card stuck crookedly in the name place. Ellen Forrest--and the card, Mr. Wm. H. Horton. Cecily pondered the familiarity of the name for a minute before its connection flashed upon her. Then she remembered. She had brought Fliss to the door of this apartment house several times; this was where Fliss lived before she had married. She hesitated, then rang the bell, and mounted the stairs to the third floor. A voice called to her to come in, a high-pitched, quite unpleasant voice and, entering, she saw a woman lying on a leather sofa pushed up to a small library table. She recognized her in spite of the disorderly hair and red bathrobe. It was Fliss’s mother. She had met her two or three times at Fliss’s own house. Mrs. Horton knew her also. She was a little embarrassed, but not excessively so, being very simple in her ways in spite of Fliss. “It’s Mrs. Harrison, isn’t it? Well, won’t you sit down? I’m real embarrassed to have you find me looking so, but I’m not able to get about much any more, you know.” “I didn’t know you were ill, Mrs. Horton? Isn’t it a shame? Is it anything serious?” Mrs. Horton winced, although at the same time a glad consciousness of the new visitor, to whom she could expound her ills, showed in her face.