“So they did for a time, till they found out that they were different kinds of Baptists, just imagine! They had such arguments in the kitchen that Lucy has had to sit in her pantry, and last evening Margaret called the housemaid a 'contracted Baptist,' and she said Margaret was a 'loose Baptist.' So Margaret told me that if she was a 'loose Baptist,' it was not good for the housemaid to stay in the house with her; and if I preferred a woman like that, she would go at once, and so she is going.”  “When men break on theology in the smoking-room,” remarked Leslie, “the wise go to bed at once, and two women—and one of them old Margaret—on the distinctions among the Baptist denomination must be beyond words and endurance. It is natural that places should be given up, but not necessary that the offer should be accepted. What did you say to Margaret, Florence?”  

 “That she had secured the dismissal of five servants already within three years: one because she was High Church; a second because she was no Church; that big housemaid from Devon for no reason I could discover except that she ate too much, as if we grudged food; the last waitress because she did not work enough, as if that concerned her; and the one before because she had a lover Margaret did not approve, and that I did not propose to lose a good housemaid because she was not the same sort of Baptist as Margaret. 

 “It is very nice and romantic to talk about the old family servant,”  continued Mrs. Leslie with a vibrant voice, “and I hope that I have not been ungrateful to Margaret, but people forget what a mistress has to suffer from the 'old family servant,' and I tell you, John, that I can endure Margaret's dictation no longer. She must leave, or... I must”; and when his wife swept out of the room to dress for dinner, Leslie knew that they had come to a crisis in family life. 

 II 

 “How are you, mummy?” and Jack burst in upon the delighted household gathered in the hall with a trail of loosely packed luggage behind him, and a pair of skates he had forgotten to pack altogether, round his neck. “I say, that's a ripping dress you have on. Cusack, our house 'pre,' says yours is the prettiest photo he ever saw. You're looking fit, pater, but you must come a trot with me, or you'll have a pot soon. Jolly journey? Should rather think so! dressed old Swallow up in a rug, and laid him out on a seat; people thought he had small-pox, and wouldn't come in; four of us had the place to ourselves all the way: foxey, wasn't it? Cold, not a bit. We shoved every hot-water pan in below the seats, and the chaps put more in at 

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