* * * * *

“About that servant question,” I began, after Dicky was comfortably settled and smiling over his cigar.  “I will employ one, a first-class, really competent housekeeper, if you will make no objection to this.”

I opened the letter and handed it to him.  He read it through, his face growing angrier at every line.  When he had finished he threw it on the floor.

“Well, I guess not,” he exclaimed.  “I know that club game; it’s the limit.  There’s nothing in it.  They’ll pay only a beggarly sum, and you’ll be tied to that same afternoon once a week for a year.  Suppose we had something we wanted to do on that day?  We would have to let it go hang.”

“I suppose if we had something we wanted to do on a day when you had a commission to execute you would leave your work and go,” I answered quietly.

“That’s entirely different,” returned Dicky.  “I’m responsible for the support of this family.  You are not.  All you have to do is to enjoy yourself and make home comfortable for me.”

We were interrupted by the door bell.  Dicky went to the door while I hastily dropped the portiers between the living room and the dining room.  I heard Dicky’s deep voice in greeting.

“This is good of you, Lil,” and Lillian Gale came into the room with outstretched hand.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have come so soon,” she said, “but you see I am bound to know you, even if Dicky does spirit you away when we want you to join us.”

She threw him a laughing glance as she clasped my hand.

“I am so glad you have come,” I said cordially, but inwardly I fiercely resented her intrusion, as I deemed it.

But what was my horror to hear Dicky say casually: 

“You’ve come at a most opportune time, Lil.  Madge has had an offer from some woman’s club to do a lecturing stunt on history, her specialty, you know, and she wants to take it.  I wish you’d help me persuade her out of it.”

“I cannot imagine why we should trouble Mrs. Underwood with so personal a matter,” I heard myself saying faintly.

Mrs. Underwood laughed boisterously.  “Why, I’m one of the family, my dear child,” she said heartily.  Then she looked at me keenly.

“I might have known that one man would have no chance with two women,” Dicky growled.  His tone held capitulation.  I knew I had won my battle.  But was it my victory or this woman’s I so detested?

“Don’t let this man bully you,” she advised half-laughingly.  “He’s perfectly capable of it.  I know him.  By all means accept the offer if you think it’s worth while.  All these husbands are a bit archaic yet, you know.  They don’t realize that women have joined the human race.”

“Come, Dicky-bird,” she rattled on as she saw his darkening face.  “Don’t be silly.  You’ll have to give in.  You’re just 50 years behind the times, you know.”

During the remainder of Mrs. Underwood’s brief call she ignored Dicky, and devoted herself to me.  There is no denying the fact that she has great charm when she chooses to exercise it.  Dicky, however, appeared entirely oblivious of it, sitting in moody silence until she rose to go.