She turned to find her newly engaged housekeeper standing behind her in the semi-obscurity of the passage. Martha Cottle was a tall, angular woman with a pallid, uncertain complexion, a long thin nose, and an air of perpetual inquiry. “Was that the party you expect to work for?” she demanded. “I thought,” she added, with a slightly offended air, “that you’d call me in and introduce me. I was waiting in the dining-room.” Barbara wondered if the spinster’s large, flat ears had caught any of the conversation, carried on unguardedly on the other side of the door. She shook her head. “That wasn’t the person,” she said. “Perhaps to-morrow——” She hesitated. “Of course it will be soon.” Miss Cottle pushed authoritatively into the room where Barbara had been sitting. “I haven’t had a real good opportunity to talk things over with you,” she said. “If you’re expecting to be called away sudden, perhaps this will be as good a time as any. I want to tell you what I think about that child.” Barbara drew a deep breath. “Well?” she murmured interrogatively. “I see you’ve spoiled him pretty completely,” pursued Miss Cottle. “But I’ll soon get him in hand.” She compressed her thin lips. “He got into a regular tantrum to-night because I took a book of his to look at. ‘Vallable Inf’mation,’ he calls it. Nearly every word in it is spelled wrong. I wonder at you for permitting anything of the sort. I took the book away from him. Here it is.” Barbara looked at the woman in a sudden panic of apprehension. “Oh!” she protested, “you ought not to have done that. The book was a birthday present. It is one of Jimmy’s dearest treasures.” “I believe you said you wanted I should look after James’s education,” intoned the spinster. “If I am to stay here, I shall do it con-sci-en-tiously.” She pronounced the last word with due regard to every syllable, it being a favorite adverb modifying every possible activity. Barbara was turning over the pages of the book, several of which were quite covered with Jimmy’s scrawling characters in red ink. “A Vallable Information ’bout getting mad [she read]. Dont get mad Ezy. It dont Do enny Good, an sum the tim it gets a fello in Trubble. Peg says this is portant.” Barbara smiled as she shut the covers gently together. “I shall give this book to Jimmy,” she said quietly, “and please, Miss Cottle, don’t take it away from him again. Jimmy is such a little boy, and I—he has always been loved. I hope you——” “I don’t believe in sozzling over a child,” interrupted the woman severely. “I’ll see that the boy gets plenty of good bread and butter, and that he goes to school and Sabbath services regularly. By the time you get back I guess you’ll see quite a change in him. When do you expect to start, to-morrow?” Miss Cottle’s tone expressed a growing impatience.