"In our room; Aunt Blin and I. Aunt Blin died just after the fire," said Bel, simply. Asenath's gravity grew sweeter and more real; the tremulous twinkle quieted in her eyes. "I don't know what to answer you, exactly," she said, presently. "This is just what we housekeepers have been saying ought to happen: and now that it does happen, I feel afraid of taking you in. It is very odd; but the difficulties on your side begin to come to me. I have no doubt that on my side it would be lovely. But have you thought about this 'real place to live' that you want? what it would have to be? Do you think you would be contented in a kitchen? And the washing? Our washings are so large, with all these little children!" Yes, it was odd. Without waiting to be catechised, or resenting beforehand the spirit of jealous inquiry, Asenath Scherman was frankly putting it in the heads of these unused applicants that there might be doubts as to her service suiting them. "I suppose we could do anything reasonable," said Kate Sencerbox. "I wonder if it is reasonable!" said Mrs. Scherman. "Mr. Scherman has six shirts a week, and the children's things count up fearfully, and the ironing is nice work. I'm afraid you wouldn't think you had any time left for living. The clothes hardly ever all come up before Thursday morning." "And the cooking and all are just the same those days?" asked Kate. "Why yes, pretty nearly, except just Mondays. Monday always has to be rather awful. But after that, we _do_ expect to live. We couldn't hold our breaths till Thursday." "I guess there's something that isn't quite reasonable, somewhere," said Kate. "But I don't think it's you, Mrs. Scherman, not meaningly. I wonder if two or three sensible people couldn't straighten it out? There ought to be a way. The nursery girl helps, doesn't she?" "Yes. She does the baby's things. But while baby is so little, I can't spare her for much more. With doing them, and her own clothes, I don't seem to have her more than half the time, now." Kate Sencerbox sat still, considering. Bel Bree was afraid that was the last of it. In that one still minute she could almost feel her beautiful plan crumbling, by little bits, like a heap of sand in a minute-glass, away into the opposite end where things had been before, with nobody to turn them upside down again. Which _was_ upside down, or right side up? She had not thought a word about big, impossible washings. Kate spoke out at last. "Every one brings the work of one, you see," she said. "What do you mean?" "I wish there needn't be any nursery girl." Mrs. Scherman lifted her eyebrows in utter amaze. The suggestion to the ordinary Irish mind would have been, as she had already experienced, another nurse; certainly not the dispensing with that official altogether. "What wages do you pay, Mrs. Scherman?" was Kate's next question. It came, evidently in the process of a reasoning calculation; not, as usual, with the grasping of demand.