“I’ll go right round for Kate, and we’ll just call and see.  I don’t know in the least how to begin about it when I get there.  I could do the thing, if I can make out the first understanding.  I hope Kate won’t be very Kate-y!”

She said so to Miss Sencerbox when she found her.

“You needn’t be afraid.  I’m bound to astonish somebody.  Impertinence wouldn’t do that.  I shall strike out a new line.  I’m the cook,—­or the chambermaid,—­which is it? that they haven’t had any of before.  I shall keep my sharp relishes for our own private table.  You might discriminate, Bel!  I know I’ve got a kind of a pert, snappy-sounding name,—­just like the outside of me; but if you stop to look at it, it isn’t Saucebox, but Sensebox!  They’re related, sometimes, and they ain’t bad together; but yet, apart, they’re different.”

CHAPTER XXVII.

BEL BREE’S CRUSADE:  THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM.

Mrs. Frank Scherman’s front door-bell rang.  Of course she had to go down and open it herself.  When she did so, she let in two girls whose pretty faces, bright with a sort of curious expectation, met hers in a way by which she could hardly guess their station or errand.

She did not know them; they might be anybody’s daughters, yet they hardly looked like technical “young ladies.”

They stepped directly in without asking; they moved aside till she had closed the door against the keen November wind; then Bel said,—­

“We came to see what help you wanted, Mrs. Scherman.  Miss Ledwith told us.”

How did Bel know so quickly that it was Mrs. Scherman?  There was something in her instant conclusion and her bright directness that amused Asenath, while it bore its own letter of recommendation so far.

“Do you mean you wished to inquire for yourselves,—­or for either of you?” she asked, as she led the way up-stairs.

“I must bring you up where the children are,” she said.  “I cannot leave them.”

They were all in the large back room, with western windows, over the parlor.  The doors through a closet passage stood open into Mrs. Scherman’s own.  There were blocks, and linen picture-books, and a red tin wagon full of small rag-dolls, about on the floor.  Baby Karen was rolled up in a blanket on the middle of a bed.

“You see, this is the family,—­except Mr. Scherman.  I want two good, experienced girls for general work, and another to help me here in the nursery.  I say two for general work, because I want some things equally divided, and others exchanged willingly upon occasion.  Do you want places for yourselves?”

She paused to repeat the question, hardly sure of the possibility.  These girls did not look much like it.  There was no half-suspicious, half-aggressive expression on their faces even yet.  It was time for it; time for her own cross-examination to begin, according to all precedent, if they were really looking out for themselves.  Why didn’t they sit up straight and firm, with their hands in their muffs and their eyes on hers, and say with a rising inflection and lips that moved as little as possible,—­“What wages, mum?” or “What’s the conveniences—­or the privileges—­mum?”