ways as we go along,—­all round.  If you’re willing, we are.  It’s Bel’s idea, not mine; though she’s let me take it to myself, and do the talking.  I suppose because she thought I should be the hardest of the two to be suited.  And so I am.  I didn’t believe in it at first.  But I begin to see into it; and I’ve got interested.  I’d like to work it out on this line, now.  Then I shall know.”

There were not many more words after that; there did not need to be.  Mrs. Scherman engaged them to come, at once, for three dollars and a half a week each.

“It’s a kind of a kitchen gospel,” said Bel Bree, as they walked up Summit Street.  “And it’s got to come from the girls.  What can the poor ladies do, up in their nurseries, with their big houses, full of everything, on their hands, and the servants dictating and clearing out?  They can’t say their souls are their own.  They can’t plan their work, or say how many they’ll have to do it.  The more they have, the more they’ll have to have.  It ain’t Mr. and Mrs. Scherman, and those two little children,—­or two and a half,—­that makes all the to-do.  Every girl they get makes the dinners more, and the Mondays heavier.  Why, the family grows faster down-stairs than up, with a nurse for every baby!  Think of the tracking and travelling, the wear and tear.  Every one makes work for one, and dirt for two.  It’s taking in a regiment down below, and laying the trouble all off on to the poor little last baby up-stairs!  And the ladies don’t see through it.  They just keep getting another parlor girl, or door girl, or nursery girl, and wondering that the things don’t grow easier.  It’s like that queer rule in arithmetic about fractions,—­where dividing and multiplying get all mixed up, and you can’t hold on to the reason why, in your mind, long enough to look at it.”

“Why didn’t you go down and see the kitchen?”

“Because, how could she leave those tots to take care of themselves while she showed us?  Our minds were made up.  You said just the truth; if we can try it anywhere, we can try it there.  And whatever the kitchen is, it’s only our place to begin on.  We’ll have it all right, or something near it, before we’ve been there a fortnight.  It’s only a room we take, where the work is given in to do.  If we had one anywhere else, we should expect to fix up and settle in it according to our own notions, and why not there?  We’re rent free, and paid for our work.  I’m going to have things of my own; personal property.  If I want a chandelier, I’ll save up and get one; only I sha’n’t want it.  There’s ways to contrive, Kate; and real fun doing it.”

An hour afterward, they were on their way back, with their leather bags.

Baby Karen was asleep, and Mrs. Scherman came down-stairs to let them in again, with Marmaduke holding to her hand, and Sinsie hopping along behind.  They all went into the kitchen together.

Mrs. McCormick had “cleared it up,” so that there was at least a surface tidiness and cheerfulness.  The floor was freshly scrubbed, the table-tops scoured down, the fire made, and the gas lighted.  Mrs. McCormick had gone home, to be ready for her own husband and her two “boys” when they should come in from their work to their suppers.