"For a couple who a few weeks ago knew nothing about the servant question, and indignantly scouted the idea that there was such a thing, we are getting on well," she said in a low voice. "You are growing awfully suspicious, Archie. The iron seems to have entered your soul. Because Anna Carter and Mrs. Potzenheimer were failures--quick failures I grant--you are now inclined to put every cook in the same boat. Oh, Archie, I'm ashamed of you. If you are always looking for evil motives you will find them, sure enough." She paused, and the tears welled up again. The sight was so painful to me that--in sheer dread of its continuance--I succumbed. That is to say, I had no further adverse comments to make and the field was Letitia's! Undoubtedly, she knew it. "You see, dear," she said in mollified tones, "you don't understand the probable position of poor Mrs. McCaffrey. Imagine her alone in the world with a child. She is poor. She must earn a living for the two of them. All she knows how to do is to cook. She places herself in the market as a cook. But there is the child! She can not smother it, and she must take it with her. She is therefore anxious that the place to which she takes it shall be respectable and--religious. I don't suppose that she is too fearfully particular. But naturally, she would not like to see the dear little thing in the house of a man who drank and swore, and of a woman who--well, of a woman who behaved in the femininely equivalent. So, just to protect herself, she says Christian principles. I admire her for it, Archie." Silence on my part. Letitia's triumphant logic was of course unanswerable. I made no attempt to answer it, and Letitia was "riled." "Do say something, dear," she urged. "I don't want to vex you, Letitia," I said, "and that is why I am silent. But you surely must know that men with Christian principles do swear and do drink. Our old servant at Oxford had thoroughly Christian principles, but he used to beat his wife regularly every night. The Christian principles were there, but they were not sufficient." Letitia knew that she had won the day and was instantly her own delightful, charming self. "You are splitting straws," she said, "you baby! I have a great mind to tell Mrs. McCaffrey exactly what you said--and don't believe! It would serve you right if I went to 33 Sixth Avenue and said, 'You'll like our home, Mrs. McCaffrey. My husband has Christian principles. He drinks like a fish, swears like a trooper, and beats his wife like a British workingman. But he is _such_ a Christian!' Archie, I believe you're jealous, and that's the trouble with you. You think that if there is a child your nose will be out of joint. Such a foolish husband!" And Letitia rose in her seat and kissed me over the table, although there were two waiters in dangerous proximity, and an enormous married couple, who seemed scandalized, at the very next table. It really did look most unseemly at such an ungodly hour of the morning!