"I thought this was Justine's business, Sally?" said he, frowning over his eyeglasses. "Well, it IS" said his wife, "but she hasn't enough money, apparently, and she simply handed me these, without saying anything." "Well, but that doesn't sound like her. Why?" "Oh, because I do the ordering, she says. They're queer, you know, Kane; all servants are. And she seems very touchy about it." "Nonsense!" said the head of the house roundly. "Oh, Justine!" he shouted, and the maid, after putting an inquiring head in from the dining-room, duly came in, and stood before him. "What's struck your budget that you were so proud of, Justine?" asked Kane Salisbury. "It looks pretty sick." "I am not keeping on a budget now," answered Justine, with a rather surprised glance at her mistress. "Not; but why not?" asked the man good-naturedly. And his wife added briskly, "Why did you stop, Justine?" "Because Mrs. Salisbury has been ordering all this month," Justine said. "And that, of course, makes it impossible for me to keep track of what is spent. These last four weeks I have only been keeping an account; I haven't attempted to keep within any limit." "Ah, you see that's it," Kane Salisbury said triumphantly. "Of course that's it! Well, Mrs. Salisbury will have to let you go back to the ordering then. D'ye see, Sally? Naturally, Justine can't do a thing while you're buying at random--" "My dear, we have dealt with Lewis & Sons ever since we were married," Mrs. Salisbury said, smiling with great tolerance, and in a soothing voice, "Justine, for some reason, doesn't like Lewis & Sons--" "It isn't that," said the maid quickly. "It's just that it's against the rules of the college for anyone else to do any ordering, unless, of course, you and I discussed it beforehand and decided just what to spend." "You mean, unless I simply went to market for you?" asked the mistress, in a level tone. "Well, it amounts to that--yes." Mrs. Salisbury threw her husband one glance. "Well, I'll tell you what we have decided in the morning, Justine," she said, with dignity. "That's all. You needn't wait." Justine went back to her kitchen, and Mr. Salisbury, smiling, said: "Sally, how unreasonable you are! And how you do dislike that girl!" The outrageous injustice of this scattered to the winds Mrs. Salisbury's last vestige of calm, and, after one scathing summary of the case, she refused to discuss it at all, and opened the evening paper with marked deliberation. For the next two or three weeks she did all the marketing herself, but this plan did not work well. Bills doubled in size, and so many things were forgotten, or were ordered at the last instant by telephone, and arrived too late, that the whole domestic system was demoralized.