"I'll be back soon," she said, and Violet dumbly watched her lank, hatless form stride to Sixth Avenue and turn the corner. True to her word, Mrs. Turner was not long gone. "I guess it's all right," she announced, as she reopened the door to the house. "I 'phoned that woman to the settlement. She was out, but a friend answered and said the reference is _genuwine_. She described you so's I'd be sure. Looks queer of me, p'r'aps, but a person can't be too careful in this town." The gleaming glasses seeming to search her soul for a reply, Violet said that she supposed a great deal of care was necessary. "Try to get along without it," responded Mrs. Turner, "and you'll mighty soon find out." That ended preliminaries, and Violet, agreeing to send for her few belongings, began work without further formality. She discovered that Mrs. Turner was a New Englander, who conducted a boarding-house in a manner that sensibly stirred the servants' sympathies in favor of the patrons. Just now the season had greatly decreased these, but the absence of the cook--it was a chronic absence--left plenty to be done. Violet had to rise with the sun and attend to the kitchen fire. She had to help the mistress in the preparation of every meal, and of the serving of every meal and the washing of all dishes she was left in solitary authority. She made all the beds, she emptied all the slops, she swept the floors, beat the rugs, cleaned the windows, polished the stove, and scrubbed the steps. Even in the scant hours free of actual work, she must still be within call of the door-bell and Mrs. Turner's voice: the service was continuous from dawn until ten o'clock at night. It would have been, upon a frailer nature, a terrible tax, but, fresh though she was from the hospital, Violet, her sturdy stock standing her in excellent stead, managed so to stagger through it that her wracked nerves seemed actually to benefit by her physical exhaustion. Her lot had all the horrors of the average disregarded under-servant and yet, when she crept to her stifling attic room at night--a room ventilated by only a dwarfed skylight--she slept soundly and well. The situation was one that could not, however, long continue. Mrs. Turner was a pious woman and as such knew that there must be what she described as "somethin' sneakin'" about any maid that could bear her ill-temper. Long experience of one servant after another leaving the house in anger, had not only innured the good lady to such losses, but had ended by really creating a sort of appetite for the kind of condolence that she secured from her neighbors when without servile aid. It was therefore with almost a desire for the worst that she endeavored to delve into Violet's past.