The Treasure | Page 4

herself as much as was possible. So much might be conceded to a girl who was honest and clean, industrious, respectable, and a fair cook.
But the wastefulness was a serious matter. Mrs. Salisbury was a careful and an experienced manager; she resented waste; indeed, she could not afford to tolerate it. She liked to go into the kitchen herself every morning, to eye the contents of icebox and pantry, and decide upon needed stores. Enough butter, enough cold meat for dinner, enough milk for a nourishing soup, eggs and salad for luncheon--what about potatoes?
Lizzie deliberately frustrated this house-wifely ambition. She flounced and muttered when other hands than her own were laid upon her icebox. She turned on rushing faucets, rattled dishes in her pan. Yet Mrs. Salisbury felt that she must personally superintend these matters, because Lizzie was so wasteful. The girl had not been three months in the Salisbury family before all bills for supplies soared alarmingly.
This was all wrong. Mrs. Salisbury fretted over it a few weeks, then confided her concern to her husband. But Kane Salisbury would not listen to the details. He scowled at the introduction of the topic, glanced restlessly at his paper, murmured that Lizzie might be "fired"; and, when Mrs. Salisbury had resolutely bottled up her seething discontent inside of herself, she sometimes heard him murmuring, "Bad--bad--management" as he sat chewing his pipe-stem on the dark porch or beside the fire.
Alexandra, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the house, was equally incurious and unreasonable about domestic details.
"But, honestly, Mother, you know you're afraid of Lizzie, and she knows it," Alexandra would declare gaily; "I can't tell you how I'd manage her, because she's not my servant, but I know I would do something!"
Beauty and intelligence gave Alexandra, even at eighteen, a certain serene poise and self-reliance that lifted her above the old- fashioned topics of "trouble with girls," and housekeeping, and marketing. Alexandra touched these subjects under the titles of "budgets," "domestic science," and "efficiency." Neither she nor her mother recognized the old, homely subjects under their new names, and so the daughter felt a lack of interest, and the mother a lack of sympathy, that kept them from understanding each other. Alexandra, ready to meet and conquer all the troubles of a badly managed world, felt that one small home did not present a very terrible problem. Poor Mrs. Salisbury only knew that it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep a general servant at all in a family of five, and that her husband's salary, of something a little less than four thousand dollars a year, did not at all seem the princely sum that they would have thought it when they were married on twenty dollars a week.
From the younger members of the family, Fred, who was fifteen, and Stanford, three years younger, she expected, and got, no sympathy. The three young Salisburys found money interesting only when they needed it for new gowns, or matinee tickets, or tennis rackets, or some kindred purchase. They needed it desperately, asked for it, got it, spent it, and gave it no further thought. It meant nothing to them that Lizzie was wasteful. It was only to their mother that the girl's slipshod ways were becoming an absolute trial.
Lizzie, very neat and respectful, would interfere with Mrs. Salisbury's plan of a visit to the kitchen by appearing to ask for instructions before breakfast was fairly over. When the man of the house had gone, and before the children appeared, Lizzie would inquire:
"Just yourselves for dinner, Mrs. Salisbury?"
"Just ourselves. Let--me--see--" Mrs. Salisbury would lay down her newspaper, stir her cooling coffee. The memory of last night's vegetables would rise before her; there must be baked onions left, and some of the corn.
"There was some lamb left, wasn't there?" she might ask.
Amazement on Lizzie's part.
"That wasn't such an awful big leg, Mrs. Salisbury. And the boys had Perry White in, you know. There's just a little plateful left. I gave Sam the bones."
Mrs. Salisbury could imagine the plateful: small, neat, cold.
"Sometimes I think that if you left the joint on the platter, Lizzie, there are scrapings, you know--" she might suggest.
"I scraped it," Lizzie would answer briefly, conclusively.
"Well, that for lunch, then, for Miss Sandy and me," Mrs. Salisbury would decide hastily. "I'll order something fresh for dinner. Were there any vegetables left?"
"There were a few potatoes, enough for lunch," Lizzie would admit guardedly.
"I'll order vegetables, too, then!" And Mrs. Salisbury would sigh. Every housekeeper knows that there is no economy in ordering afresh for every meal.
"And we need butter--"
"Butter again! Those two pounds gone?"
"There's a little piece left, not enough, though. And I'm on my last cake of soap, and we need crackers, and vanilla, and sugar, unless you're not going to have a dessert, and salad