"We shall be driven out of our house. We shall have to leave," she said, very pale. "After all these years, we shall have to go. We _can't_ stand all their nasty little back ways!" "Where are we to go to?" said Mrs. Bradford. She paused a moment. "It's the same everywhere. Besides, the houses are not built yet." There was nothing for them to do but to turn their backs on the board and walk quietly away, filled with that aching home-sickness for the quiet past which thousands of middle-aged people were feeling at that moment all over Europe. Everything was so different, and the knowledge of it gave to Miss Ethel a constant sense of exasperated discomfort, like the ache of an internal disease which she could not forget for a moment. "I expect," she said after a while, "that Mrs. Graham will once more tell us to let ourselves go with the tide and not worry. Thank God, I never was a supine jelly-fish, and I can't start being one now." "She was talking about servants," said Mrs. Bradford, who was troubled, but not so troubled, because she took things differently. "I expect she only meant we should never get another like Ellen; but we can't expect to do so after having her for eleven years." "No. We are lucky to have Ellen's niece coming. But I wish she were a little older," said Miss Ethel. "Nineteen is very young." "Yes," replied Mrs. Bradford, letting the conversation drop, for she was not very fond of talking. And in the silence they looked back; and to both of them nineteen seemed a rather ridiculous and foolish age--even for a servant, who is supposed to be rather young. Then Miss Ethel began again--talking on to try and banish the insistent vision in her mind's eye of that square board over the privet hedge, which she knew herself foolish to dwell upon. "I wish Caroline had not lived with Ellen's sister and gone out as a day-girl to that little grocer's shop in the Avenue. I'm afraid that may have spoilt her. But it is Caroline or nobody. We may want a sensible middle-aged maid, but in these days it isn't what you want--it's what you can get." Mrs. Bradford nodded; and again they felt all over them that resentful home-sickness for the past. "One thing--we must begin as we mean to go on," said Miss Ethel. "If mistresses were only firmer there would never be such ridiculous proceedings as one hears about; but they are so afraid of losing maids that they put up with anything. No wonder the girls find this out and cease to have any respect for them. Look at Mrs. Graham! A latch-key allowed, and no caps or aprons. That's swimming with the tide, with a vengeance." "There's no fear of Caroline wanting anything of that sort," said Mrs. Bradford. "Ellen's sister, Mrs. Creddle, is as steady as Ellen."