"You mean you'll let her suffer because you haven't shown me things? No, no, I'm sure you'll be sensible. You'll stay on a few days and help me, and meanwhile I'll do all I can to find you a good position. I only hope I can get you back again in the autumn. You see it may only be for a time." She went to the nurse, who now had her arms about the child. "I'm so sorry. Remember I want you back." There were tears in Ethel's eyes as she left the nursery. "Whew!" She went into her own small room. "I wonder if I'll ever feel like that about a child?" She stared a moment and added, "That was real enough, poor thing." She drew a resolute breath. "Well, no use in feeling like a criminal, my dear. Now for the cook and the waitress." She rather took satisfaction in that, for she had disliked both of them keenly. She gave them until the end of the week, and in the meantime telegraphed for Emily Giles, who for over five years had helped her keep house for her father at home. Of medium height, spare, thin chested and thin lipped, her hair already streaked with grey, Emily had been less a servant than a grimly devoted friend. Since Ethel's departure, she had been head-waitress at the small hotel. "Emily will come," thought Ethel, "unless she's dead or paralysed." And Emily came. "Well, Miss Ethel, here I am," she said on her arrival. She said, "Miss Ethel" quite naturally, although she had always said "Ethel" before. But her tone made it sound like, "Well, kid, here I am. Now let's see what kind of a mess it is you want me to get you out of." With the aid of a book entitled, "How To Live Well On Little," together they puzzled and contrived. "The things that have gone on in this kitchen," Emily muttered more than once, as her sharp grey eyes peered here and there, now into drawers and closets, now at the many unpaid bills. "When that cook of yours wasn't grafting she must have been getting drunk on your wine." As the record was unfolded of years of careless extravagance, Ethel would frown and turn away, for it seemed disloyal to pry so deep. Poor Amy was dead and buried. With Emily she went marketing, and they beat down and bullied mankind. Emily was so good at that. And at home they worked out a schedule of housekeeping on a rigidly economical scale, dividing the work between them. All this was rather pleasant. The trouble came in the nursery, where more than once the face of the stricken woman there made it hard to keep one's mind keen and clear for all the intricate details of the careful mothering in this room, from which barely a sound had ever gone out to disturb the peace of Amy's home.