"You mean telephoning?" "Yah, telephoning, but I bane willing to learn. Have you bane keeping other help?" "I try to but they have all left me lately. Would you work with colored people?" "You bane meaning blacks? I do not love them but if you try me you find I do twice three time as much work as blacks." "And your name?" "Miss Josie Larson!" "All right, Miss Josie Larson, suppose you come in the morning and go to work." "I bane come tomorrow night and cuke the dinner. I got other business on hand for morning." "Well, I'm sorry, but I fancy I can get along without you for twelve hours longer. Now, mind you, come in time. I have dinner at seven." "I bane coming at five. Do you to market go yourself?" "I'll have provisions in the house ready for you. After tomorrow you will have to do the housekeeping as well as cooking. If I have a friend in to dinner could you serve two of us?" "Sure! I bane smart enough to serve eight if you have knives and forks to go round." Josie made a stiff bow and backed awkwardly down the steps. When the door was closed she turned quickly and literally ran back to the Elberta Inn. She got safely to her room without being seen by any of the aristocratic boarders. Alice Chisholm was waiting for her. "Well, how about it?" "Got my job as chief cook and bottle washer with the handsome Chester Hunt and will cook dinner for him tomorrow evening. In the meantime I have some work ahead of me. What I would have done without you, Alice, I do not see. I should have been forced to double-cross my boss, and I'd have hated it. My father always preached being faithful in small things." The next day was a busy one for Josie as well as Alice Chisholm. Josie must lay in a supply of maid's uniforms, aprons and caps. She must write letters to Mary Louise and her partners of the Higgledy-Piggledy, also a business epistle to her boss of the household necessities and jeweled novelties. A cook book must be purchased of the latest and most approved recipes, Josie having mastered only a few of the simpler dishes, but she had always declared that the keynote to cookery was gumption and with a good recipe and plenty of that ingredient she could master even anything as intricate as angel's food. "I can make biscuit and coffee and waffles and scrambled eggs and tea and cinnamon toast, too. I know so many ways to please an archvillain," she said to Alice. "And I know how to make batter bread and jelly roll. I am certainly coming to see you some time and show you my stunts," said Alice. "Fine but you will have to be a Swede. I didn't ask my new employer about company but I guess he won't object, just so I give him something fit to eat and clean up his house."