Men have marched in armies, fleets have borne them,       Left their homes new countries to ;
     Young men seeking fortune wide have wandered—
      We have something new.
 
     Armies of young cross our oceans;
      Leave their mother's love, their father's care;
     Maidens, young and helpless, widely wander,
      Burdens new to bear.
 
     Strange the land and language, laws and customs;
      Ignorant and all alone they come;
     Maidens young and helpless, serving strangers,
      Thus we keep the Home.
 
     When on earth was safety for young maidens
      Far from mother's love and father's care?
     We preserve The Home, and call it sacred—
      Burdens new they bear.
The sun had gone down on Madam Weatherstone's , and risen to find it unabated. With condensed disapprobation written on every well-cut feature, she came to the coldly gleaming breakfast table.
 
That Mrs. Halsey was gone, she had to admit; yet so far failed to find the exact words of for a woman of independent means discharging her own when it pleased her.
 
Young Mathew unexpectedly appeared at breakfast, perhaps in of a sort of Roman holiday in which his usually late and apologetic stepmother would furnish the amusement. They were both surprised to find her there before them, looking fresh in crisp, sheer white, with deep-toned violets in her belt.
 
She ate with every appearance of , chatting about the lovely morning—the flowers, the garden and the gardeners; her efforts ill seconded, however.
 
“Shall I attend to the orders this morning?” asked Madam Weatherstone with an air of noble patience.
 
“O no, thank you!” replied Viva. “I have engaged a new housekeeper.”
 
“A new housekeeper! When?” The old lady was shaken by this inconceivable promptness.
 
“Last night,” said her daughter-in-law, looking calmly across the table, her color rising a little.
 
“And when is she coming, if I may ask?”
 
“She has come. I have been with her an hour already this morning.”
 
Young Mathew smiled. This was amusing, though not what he had expected. “How extremely alert and businesslike!” he said lazily. “It's becoming to you—to get up early!”
 
“You can't have got much of a person—at a minute's notice,” said his grandmother. “Or perhaps you have been planning this for some time?”
 
“No,” said Viva. “I have wanted to get rid of Mrs. Halsey for some time, but the new one I found yesterday.”
 
“What's her name?” inquired Mathew.
 
“Bell—Miss Diantha Bell,” she answered, looking as calm as if announcing the day of the week, but inwardly the result somewhat. Like most of such terrors it was .
 
There was a little pause—rather an intense little pause; and then—“Isn't that the girl who set 'em all by the ears yesterday?” asked the young man, pointing to the morning paper. “They say she's a good-looker.”
 
Madam Weatherstone rose from the table in some . “I must say I am very sorry, Viva, that you should have been so—precipitate! This young woman cannot be competent to manage a house like this—to say nothing of her scandalous ideas. Mrs. Halsey was—to my mind—perfectly satisfactory. I shall miss her very much.” She swept out with an unanswerable air.
 
“So shall I,” muttered Mat, under his breath, as he strolled after her; “unless the new one's equally .”
 
Viva Weatherstone watched them go, and stood awhile looking after the well-built, well-dressed, well-mannered but far from well-behaved young man.
 
“I don't know,” she said to herself, “but I do feel—think—imagine—a good deal. I'm sure I hope not! Anyway—it's new life to have that girl in the house.”
 
That girl had undertaken what she described to Ross as “a large order—a very large order.”
 
“It's the hardest thing I ever undertook,” she wrote him, “but I think I can do it; and it will be a tremendous help. Mrs. Weatherstone's a brick—a perfect brick! She seems to have been very unhappy—for ever so long—and to have submitted to her domineering old mother-in-law just because she didn't care enough to resist. Now she's got waked up all of a sudden—she says it was my paper at the club—more likely my awful example, I think! and she fired her old housekeeper—I don't know what for—and rushed me in.
 
“So here I am. The salary is good, the work is excellent training, and I guess I can hold the place. But the old lady is a terror, and the young man—how you would despise that Johnny!”
 
The home letters she now received were rather amusing. Ross, sternly patient, saw little difference in her position. “I hope you will enjoy your new work,” he wrote, “but personally I should prefer that you did not—so you might give it up and come home sooner. I miss you as you can well imagine. Even when you were here life was hard enough—but now!!!!!!
 
“I had a half offer for the store the other day, but it fell through. If I could sell that and put the money into a ranch—fruit, hens, anything—then we could all live on it; more cheaply, I think; and I could find time for some research work I have in mind. You remember that guinea-pig experiment I want so to try?”
 
Diantha remembered and smiled sadly. She was not much interested in guinea-pigs and their potential capacities, but she was interested in her lover and his happiness. “Ranch,” she said thoughtfully; “that's not a bad idea.”
 
Her mother wrote the same patient loving letters, perfunctorily hopeful. Her father wrote none—“A woman's business—this letter-writin',” he always held; and George, after one scornful , had “washed his hands of her” with some sense of relief. He didn't like to write letters either.
 
But Susie kept up a lively correspondence. She was attached to her sister, as to all her relatives and surroundings; and while she of Diantha's , a sense of sisterly duty, to say nothing of affection, prompted her to many letters. It did not, however, always make these agreeable reading.
 
“Mother's pretty well, and the girl she's got now does nicely—that first one turned out to be a failure. Father's as cranky as ever. We are all well here and the baby (this was a brand new baby Diantha had not seen) is just a Darling! You ought to be here, you Aunt! Gerald doesn't ever speak of you—but I do just the same. You hear from the , of course. Mrs. Warden's got neuralgia or something; keeps them all busy. They are much excited over this new place of yours—you ought to hear them go on! It appears that Madam Weatherstone is a connection of theirs—one of the F. F. V's, I guess, and they think she's something wonderful. And to have you working there!—well, you can just see how they'd feel; and I don't blame them. It's no use arguing with you—but I should think you'd have enough of this disgraceful foolishness by this time and come home!”
 
Diantha tried to be very over her home letters; but they were far from . “It's no use arguing with poor Susie!” she . “Susie thinks the sun rises and sets between kitchen, nursery and !
 
“Mother can't see the good of it yet, but she will later—Mother's all right.
 
“I'm sorry the Wardens feel so—and make Ross unhappy—but of course I knew they would. It can't be helped. It's just a question of time and work.”
 
And she went to work.
 
Mrs. Porne called on her friend most , with a natural eagerness and curiosity.
 
“How does it work? Do you like her as much as you thought? Do tell me about it, Viva. You look like another woman already!”
 
“I certainly feel like one,” Viva answered. “I've seen slaves in housework, and I've seen what we fondly call 'Queens' in housework; but I never saw brains in it before.”
 
Mrs. Porne sighed. “Isn't it just wonderful—the way she does things! Dear me! We do miss her! She trained that Swede for us—and she does pretty well—but not like 'Miss Bell'! I wish there were a hundred of her!”
 
“If there were a hundred thousand she wouldn't go round!” answered Mrs. Weatherstone. “How selfish we are! That is the kind of woman we all want in our homes—and fuss because we can't have them.”
 
“Edgar says he quite agrees with her views,” Mrs. Porne went on. “Skilled by the day—food sent in—. He says if she cooked it he wouldn't care if it came all the way from Alaska! She certainly can cook! I wish she'd set up her business—the sooner the better.”
 
Mrs. Weatherstone nodded her head firmly. “She will. She's planning. This was really an interruption—her coming here, but I think it will be a help—she's not had experience in large management before, but she takes hold splendidly. She's found a dozen 'leaks' in our household already.”
 
“Mrs. Thaddler's simply furious, I hear,” said the visitor. “Mrs. Ree was in this morning and told me all about it. Poor Mrs. Ree! The home is church and state to her; that paper of Miss Bell's she regards as simple .”
 
They both laughed as that stormy meeting rose before them.
 
“I was so proud of you, Viva, up for her as you did. How did you ever dare?”
 
“Why I got my courage from the girl herself. She was—superb! Talk of blasphemy! Why I've committed lese majeste and regicide and the Unpardonable Sin since that meeting!” And she told her friend of her brief passage at arms with Mrs. Halsey. “I never liked the woman,” she continued; “and some of the things Miss Bell said set me thinking. I don't believe we half know what's going on in our houses.”
 
“Well, Mrs. Thaddler's so by 'this scandalous attack upon the sanctities of the home' that she's going about saying all sorts of things about Miss Bell. O look—I do believe that's her car!”
 
Even as they a toneless voice announced, “Mr. and Mrs. Thaddler,” and Madam Weatherstone presently appeared to greet these visitors.
 
“I think you are trying a dangerous experiment!” said Mrs. Thaddler to her young hostess. “A very dangerous experiment! Bringing that young into your home!”
 
Mr. Thaddler, and sulky, sat as far away as he could and talked to Mrs. Porne. “I'd like to try that same experiment myself,” said he to her. “You tried it some time, I understand?”
 
“Indeed we did—and would still if we had the chance,” she replied. “We think her a very exceptional young woman.”
 
Mr. Thaddler . “She is that!” he agreed. “Gad! How she did set things humming! They're humming yet—at our house!”
 
He glanced rather rancorously at his wife, and Mrs. Porne wished, as she often had before, that Mr. Thaddler wore more clothing over his domestic afflictions.
 
“Scandalous!” Mrs. Thaddler was saying to Madam Weatherstone. “Simply scandalous! Never in my life did I hear such absurd—such outrageous—charges against the sanctities of the home!”
 
“There you have it!” said Mr. Thaddler, under his breath. “Sanctity of the fiddlesticks! There was a lot of truth in what that girl said!” Then he looked rather sheepish and flushed a little—which was needless; easing his collar with a fat finger.
 
Madam Weatherstone and Mrs. Thaddler were at one on this subject; but found it hard to agree even so, no love being lost between them; and the former gave evidence of more satisfaction than at this “dangerous experiment” in the house of her friends. Viva sat silent, but with a look of intelligence that delighted Mrs. Porne.
 
“It has done her good already,” she said to herself. “Bless that girl!”
 
Mr. Thaddler went home disappointed in the real object of his call—he had hoped to see the Dangerous Experiment again. But his wife was well pleased.
 
“They will it!” she announced. “Madam Weatherstone is ashamed of her daughter-in-law—I can see that! She looks cool enough. I don't know what's got into her!”
 
“Some of that young woman's good cooking,” her husband suggested.
 
“That young woman is not there as cook!” she replied . “What she is there for we shall see later! Mark my words!”
 
Mr. Thaddler chuckled softly. “I'll mark 'em!” he said.
 
Diantha had her hands full. Needless to say her sudden entrance was resented by the of servants accustomed to the old regime. She had the keys; she explored, studied, , examined the accounts, worked out careful tables and estimates. “I wish Mother were here!” she said to herself. “She's a regular genius for accounts. I can do it—but it's no joke.”
 
She brought the results to her employer at the end of the week. “This is tentative,” she said, “and I've allowed because I'm new to a business of this size. But here's what this house ought to cost you—at the outside, and here's what it does cost you now.”
 
Mrs. Weatherstone was impressed. “Aren't you a little—spectacular?” she suggested.
 
Diantha went over it carefully; the number of rooms, the number of servants, the hours of labor, the amount............