"Telephone an agency," said Amy. "I'll send you one of my girls." Margaret's glance at Charles devilled him. "I have one who can work about three months before she has to go to a lying-in hospital, and she's just weak-minded enough to make a good domestic." "I can't," said Catherine, "haul in a stranger from an agency to leave here all day." "Well, then," Margaret was briskly matter of fact, "there's just one thing to do. Give up this foolish notion of a career, and step into Flora's empty place." Charles made a little leap at that idea, and then sank away from it, with a faint suggestion in his mouth of a disappointed fish watching a baited hook yanked out of reach. "Or," went on Margaret gravely, "Charles can stay at home. So much of your work could be done here anyway, Charles. One eye on the stew and the other on some learned tome." "Why not?" Amy's tense question knocked the drollery out of the picture. "Why wouldn't that be possible? After all, Mrs. Hammond, you have spent years doing that very thing." "The King would burn the stew, of course." Margaret rose, sending a light curtsey toward Charles. "Come along, Amy. If we're to walk home. Why don't you ask Sam, if that's the elevator boy's name, if he hasn't a lady friend out of work? That's what we do." When Catherine returned from the door, her eyes crinkled at the sight of Charles sunk behind the pages of his evening paper. "Poor old thing!" she said. "Did they rumple his fur the wrong way?" He crashed the sheets down on his knee, and lifted his face, the tips of his ears red. "Whatever does Margaret want to lug that thing around with her for." "I guess she's all right." Catherine was at the window, looking at the pale glowing bowl of the city sky before she drew the shade. "Devoted to Margaret." "Ugh! I'd like that devoted to me!" "Don't worry!" Catherine drew the shade, and turned laughing. "She won't be. She seems violently anti-man." "Wasn't she one of the females they had to feed through the nose down there at Washington?" "That's rather to her credit, isn't it?" "She's that fanatic type, all right. All emotion, unbalanced, no brain. Now Margaret has some intelligence. But she's being influenced by this woman. I can see a difference in her. To think that she chose herself to leave your mother for that!" "I think few people influence Margaret." Catherine moved quietly about the room, picking up books left by Spencer, a toy of Letty's, Marian's doll. "She's hard headed, you know." "Well," said Charles with great finality, "she won't ever capture any man while she has that female attached to her. Great mistake for a nice girl like Margaret to tie herself up with that woman. She seems the real paranoia type." "Now you've finished her," Catherine rumpled his hair gently as she passed his chair, "tell me what on earth to do. About a maid, I mean." "Don't know, I'm sure." Charles frowned briefly and picked up his paper again. "Advertise, perhaps," he added.