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THE window of Randolph Reed's office was almost completely covered by magnificent gold block lettering. This to any one who had time and ability to read it—and the former was more common in the community than the latter—conveyed the information that Reed dealt in every kind of real estate, from country palaces to city flats. The last item was put in more for the sake of symmetry than accuracy, for the small Southern town contained nothing approaching an apartment house.

From behind this pattern of gold, Reed peered eagerly one autumn afternoon, chewing the end of a frayed cigar, and listening for the sound of a motor. He was a stout young man, of an amiable though unreadable countenance, but like many people of a heavy build, he was capable of extreme quickness of movement. This was never more clearly shown than when, about four o'clock, the wished for sound actually reached his ears. A motor was approaching.

With a bound Reed left the window, and, seated at his desk, presented in the twinkling of an eye the appearance of a young American business man, calm and efficient, on an afternoon of unusual business pressure. He laid papers in piles, put them in clips and took them out, snapped rubber bands about them with frenzied haste, and finally seizing a pen, he began to indite those well-known and thrilling words: "Dear Sir: Yours of the 15th instant received and contents—" when the motor drew up before his door.

It was an English car; all green and nickel; it moved like an expert skater on perfect ice. As it stopped, the chauffeur dropped from his place beside the driver. The driver himself, removing his glasses, sprang from the car and up the office steps, slapping the pockets of his coat as he did so in a search which soon appeared to be for cigarettes and matches.

"Sorry to be late," he said.

Reed, who had looked up as one who did not at once remember, in his vast preoccupation, either his visitor or his business, now seemed to recall everything. He waved the newcomer to a chair, with a splendid gesture.

"Doubtless the roads," he began.

"Roads!" said the other. "Mud-holes. No, we left Washington later than I intended. Well, have you got the house for me?"

Reed offered his client a cigar.

"No, thank you, prefer my cigarette if you don't mind."

Reed did not mind in the least. The real estate business in Vestalia was never brilliant, and several weeks' profits might easily have been expended in one friendly smoke.

His client was a man under thirty, of a type that used to be considered typically American—that is to say, Anglo-Saxon, modified by a century or so of New England climate and conscience. His ancestors had been sailors, perhaps, and years of exposure had tanned their skins and left their eyes as blue as ever. His movements had the gentleness characteristic of men who are much with horses, and though he was active and rather lightly built, he never was sudden or jerky in any gesture. Something of this same quietness might be detected in his mental attitude. People sometimes thought him hesitating or undecided on questions about which his mind was irrevocably made up. He took a certain friendly interest in life as a whole, and would listen with such patience to an expression of opinion that the expresser of it was often surprised to find the opinion had had no weight with him, whatsoever.

He stood now, listening with the politest attention to Reed's somewhat flowery description of the charms of the Revelly house—charms which Crane himself had examined in the minutest detail.

"Never before," exclaimed the real estate agent, in a magnificent peroration, "never before has the splendid mansion been rented—"

"Ah," said Crane with a smile, "I believe you there."

"Never been offered for rent," corrected the real estate agent, with a cough. "Its delightful colonial flavor—"

"Its confounded dilapidation," said the prospective tenant.

"Its boxwood garden, its splendid lawns, its stables, accommodating twenty-five horses—"

"Yes, if they don't lean up against the sides."

Reed frowned.

"If," he remarked with a touch of pride, "you do not want the house—"

The young man of the motor car laughed good-temperedly.

"I thought we had settled all that last week," he said. "I do want the house; I do appreciate its beauties; I do not consider it in good repair, and I continue to think that the price for six weeks is very high. Have the owners come down?"

Reed frowned again.

"I thought I made it clear, on my part," he answered, "that Mr. and Mrs. Revelly are beyond the reach of communication. They are on their way to Madeira. Before they left they set the price on their house, and I can only follow their instructions. Their children—there are four children—"

"Good heavens, I don't have to rent them with the house, do I?" exclaimed the other frivolously.

The real estate agent colored, probably from annoyance.

"No, Mr. Crane," he answered proudly, "you do not, as far as I know, have to do anything you do not wish to do. What I was about to say was that the children have no authority to alter the price determined by their parents. To my mind, however, it is not a question of absolute value. There is no doubt that you can find newer and more conveniently appointed houses in the hunting district—certainly cheaper ones, if price be such an object. But the Revelly family—one of the most aristocratic families south of Mason and Dixon's, sir—would not be induced to consider renting under the sum originally named."

"It's pretty steep," said the young man, but his mild tone already betrayed him. "And how about servants?"

"Ah," said Reed, looking particularly mask-like, "servants! That has been the great difficulty. To guarantee domestic service that will satisfy your difficult Northern standards—"

"I am fussy about only two things," said Crane, "cooking and boots. Must have my boots properly done."

"If you could have brought your own valet—"

"But I told you he has typhoid fever. Now, see here, Mr. Reed, there really isn't any use wasting my time and yours. If you have not been able to get me a staff of servants with the house, I wouldn't dream of taking it. I thought we had made that clear."

Reed waved his impatient client again to his chair.

"There are at this moment four well-recommended servants yonder in the back office, waiting to be interviewed."

"By me?" exclaimed Crane, looking slightly alarmed.

Reed bowed.

"I wish first, however," he went on, "to say a word or two about them. I obtained them with the greatest difficulty, from the Crosslett-Billingtons, of whom you have doubtless often heard."

"Never in my life," said Crane.

Reed raised his eyebrows.

"He is one of our most distinguished citizens. His collection of tapestry, his villa at Capri—Ah, well, but that is immaterial! The family is now abroad, and has in consequence consented, as a personal favor to me, to allow you to take over four of their servants for the six weeks you will be here, but not a minute longer."

Crane leaned back and blew smoke in the air.

"Are they any good?" he asked.

"You must judge for yourself."

"No, you must tell me."

"The butler is a competent person; the skill of the cook is a proverb—but we had better have them come in and speak to you themselves."

"No, by Jove!" cried Crane, springing to his feet. "I don't think I could stand that." And he incontinently rushed from the office to the motor, where three mummy-like figures on the back seat had remained immovable during his absence.

Of these, two were female and one male. To the elder of the women, Crane applied, hat in hand.

"Won't you give me the benefit of your advice, Mrs. Falkener," he said. "The agent has some servants for me. The wages and everything like that have all been arranged, but would you mind just looking them over for me and telling me what you think about them?"

To invite Mrs. Falkener to give her advice on a detail of household management was like inviting a duck to the pond. She stepped with a queen-like dignity from the car. She was a commanding woman who swam through life, borne up by her belief in her own infallibility. To be just, she was very nearly infallible in matters of comfort and domestic arrangement, and it was now many years since she had given attention to anything else in the world. She was a thorough, able and awe-inspiring woman of fifty-three.

Now she moved into Reed's office, with motor-veils and dusters floating about her, like a solid wingless victory, and sat down in Randolph Reed's own chair. (It was part of her philosophy never to interview a social inferior until she herself was seated.) With a slight gesture of her gloved hand, she indicated that the servants might be admitted to her presence.

The door to the back office opened and the four candidates entered. The first was the butler, a man slightly younger in years than most of those careworn functionaries. He came forward with a quick, rapid step, turning his feet out and walking on his toes. Only Mrs. Falkener recognized that it was the walk of a perfect butler. She would have engaged him on the spot, but when she noted that his hair was parted from forehead back to the line of his collar and brushed slightly forward in front of his ears, she experienced a feeling of envy and for the first time thought with dissatisfaction of the paragon she had left in charge of her own pantry at home.

She did indeed ask him a question or two, just to assure herself of his English intonation, which, it must be owned, a residence in the South had slightly influenced. And then with a start she passed on to the next figure—the cook.

On her the eyes of her future employer had already been fixed since the door first opened, and it would be hardly possible to exaggerate the effect produced by her appearance. She might have stepped from a Mid-Victorian Keepsake, or Book of Beauty. She should have worn eternally a crinoline and a wreath of flowers; her soft gray-blue eyes, her little bowed mouth, her slim throat, should have been the subject of a perpetual steel engraving. She was small, and light of bone, and her hands, crossed upon her check apron (for she was in her working dress), were so little and soft that they seemed hardly capable of lifting a pot or kettle.

Mrs. Falkener expressed the general sentiment exactly when she gasped:

"And you are the cook?"

The cook, whose eyes had been decorously fixed upon the floor, now raised them, and sweeping one rapid glance across both her employer and the speaker, whispered discreetly:

"Yes, ma'am."

"What is your name?"

And at this question a curious thing happened. The butler and Reed answered simultaneously. Only, the butler said "Jane," and Reed, with equal conviction, said "Ellen."

Ignoring this seeming contradiction, the cook fixed her dove-like glance on Mrs. Falkener and answered:

"My name is Jane-Ellen, ma'am."

It was impossible for even as conscientious a housekeeper as Mrs. Falkener to be really severe with so gentle a creature, but she contrived to say, with a certain sternness:

"I should like to see your references, Jane-Ellen."

"Oh, I'm sure that will be all right, Mrs. Falkener," said Crane hastily. He had never removed his eyes from the face of his future cook.

But Jane-Ellen, with soft gestures of those ridiculous hands, was already unfolding a paper, and now handed it to Mrs. Falkener.

That lady took it and held it off at arm's length while she read it.

"And who," she asked, turning to Reed, "is this Claudia Revelly? Mrs. Revelly, I suppose?"

"Why, no," answered Reed. "No, as I told you, Mrs. Revelly is in Madeira with her husband. This is one of the Miss Revellys."

"Humph," replied Mrs. Falkener. "It is a flattering reference, but in my time the word 'recommend' was spelled with only one 'c.'"

The cook colored slightly and flashed a glance that might have been interpreted as reproachful at Reed, who said hastily:

"Ah, yes, quite so. You know—the fact is—our Southern aristocracy—the Revellys are among our very—However, there can be no question whatever about Jane-Ellen's ability. You will, I can assure you from personal experience, be satisfied with her cooking. Mrs. Crosslett-Billington—"

"Humph!" said Mrs. Falkener again, as one who does not mean to commit herself. "We shall see. Let the housemaid come a little forward."

At this a young woman advanced; she bore a certain resemblance of feature to the butler, but entirely lacked his competent alertness.

"This young woman looks to me sullen," Mrs. Falkener observed to Crane, hardly modulating her clear, dry tone of voice.

Crane betrayed his embarrassment. He wished now that he had not invited his elderly friend's coöperation.

"Oh," he said, "I'm sure it will be all right. It must be a trifle annoying to be looked over like this."

"The best way to settle this sort of thing is at the start," replied Mrs. Falkener, and turning to the housemaid, she asked her her name.

"Lily," replied the young woman, in a deep voice of annoyance.

"Lily," said Mrs. Falkener, as if this were a most unsuitable name for a housemaid, and she looked up at Crane to confirm her opinion, but he was again looking at the cook and did not notice her.

"Well, Lily," continued the elder lady, as if she made a distinct concession in making use of such a name at all in addressing a servant, "do you or do you not want to take this place? There is, I suppose, nothing to compel you to take it if you do not want. But now is the time to say so."

Lily, with a manner that did seem a little ungracious, replied that she did want it, and added, on receiving a quick glance from the butler, Smithfield, "Madame."

"Well, then," said Mrs. Falkener, becoming more condescending, "we shall expect a more pleasant demeanor from you, a spirit of coöperation. Nothing is more trying for yourself or your fellow servants—"

Reed moved forward and whispered in Mrs. Falkener's ear:

"It will straighten out of itself, my dear madame—nothing but a little embarrassment—a grande dame like yourself, you understand me, a tremendous impression on a young woman of this sort—"

Mrs. Falkener interrupted him.

"What is the name of the boy in the corner?" she asked.

At this, a round-faced lad of perhaps eighteen sprang forward. The most striking items of his costume were a red neckerchief and a green baize apron and leggings, giving to his appearance a slight flavor of a horse-boy in an illustration to Dickens.

"I, ma'am," he said, with a strong cockney accent, "am the Useful Boy, as they say in the States."

"He's very good at doing boots," said Reed.

"Boots," cried the boy, and kissing his hand he waved it in the air with a gesture we have been accustomed to think of as continental rather than British, "a boot, particularly a riding-boot, is to me—"

"What is your name?" Mrs. Falkener asked, and this time the severity of her manner was unmistakable.

It did not, however, dampen the enthusiasm of the last candidate.

"My name, ma'am," he replied, "is B-r-i-n-d-l-e-b-u-r-y."

"Brindlebury?"

"Pronounced, 'Brinber'—the old Sussex name with which, ma'am, I have no doubt you, as a student of history—"

Mrs. Falkener turned to Crane.

"I think you will have trouble with that boy," she said. "He is inclined to be impertinent."

Crane looked at the boy over her head, and the boy, out of a pair of twinkling gray eyes, looked back. They both managed to look away again before a smile had been actually exchanged, but Crane found himself making use for the third time of his favorite formula:

"Oh, I think I'll find him all right."

Mrs. Falkener, remembering the pitiable weakness of men, again waved her hand.

"They may go now," she said to Reed, who hastily shepherded the four back again into the back office. When they were alone, she turned to Crane and said with the utmost conviction:

"My dear Burton, none of those servants will do—except the butler, who appears to be a thoroughly competent person. But those young women—they may have been anything. Did you not observe that their nails had been manicured?"

Crane stammered slightly, for the fact had not escaped him, in connection, at least, with one of the young women.

"Don't—don't cooks ever manicure their nails?" he said. "It seems rather a good idea to me."

Reed, who was once more approaching, caught these last words.

"Ah," he said, "you were speaking of the manicuring of servants' nails—"

Mrs. Falkener gave him a severe look.

"I was advising Mr. Crane not to engage any one but the butler."

"Indeed, how very interesting," said Reed. "Your judgment in the matter is very valuable, madame, I know, but perhaps you do not sufficiently emphasize the difficulties of getting any servants at all in this part of the country. In fact, I could not undertake, if these are not engaged—"

"Well, I could," said the lady. "I could telegraph to New York to my own intelligence office and have three really competent people here by to-morrow evening."

For a moment Reed looked profoundly distressed, and then he went on:

"Exactly, I have no doubt, madame. But what I was about to say was that I could not undertake to rent the Revelly house to a staff of unknown Northern servants. You see, these two young women have been practically brought up in the household of Mrs. Crosslett-Billington—an old family friend of the Revellys—and they know they would take care of things in the way they are accustomed to—"

"Of course, of course, very natural," said Crane. "I quite agree. I'm willing to give these people a chance. Of course, Mrs. Falkener, I don't know as much about these things as you do, but it's only for a few weeks, and as for their nails—"

"Oh, I can explain that," cried Reed; "in fact, I should have done so at the start. It's an idiosyncrasy of Mr. Billington's. He insists that all the servants in the house should be manicured, particularly those who wait on table, or have anything to do with touching the food."

Mrs. Falkener compressed her lips till they were nothing but a seam in her face.

"Humph!" she said again, and without another word she turned and swept out of the office.

Left alone, the two men stood silent, without even looking at each other, and finally it was Crane who observed mildly:

"Well, you know, they are a little queer in some ways—"

"Take my word for it," said Reed, earnestly, "you will make no mistake in engaging them all—except that boy, but you can manage him, I have no doubt. As for the cook, you will be surprised. Her cooking is famous in three counties, I assure you."

An instant later, the lease was duly signed.

When the motor was safely on its way back to Washington, Mrs. Falkener gave her companions on the back seat the benefit of her own impression. One was her daughter, a muscular, dark-eyed girl, who imagined that she had thoroughly emancipated herself from her mother's dominance because she had established a different field of interest. She loved out-of-door sport of all kinds, particularly hunting, and was as keen and competent about them as her mother was about household management. The two respected each other's abilities, and managed to lead an affectionate life in common.

The man on the back seat was Solon Tucker—Crane's lawyer, by inheritance rather than by choice. He was a thin, erect man, with a narrow head and that expression of mouth at once hard and subtle that the Law writes on so many men's faces. His mind was excellently clear, his manner reserved, and his invariable presupposition that all human beings except himself were likely to make fools of themselves. He had, however, immense respect for Mrs. Falkener's opinions on any subject except law—on which he respected nobody's opinions but his own, least of all those of judges; and he believed that nothing would so effectively lighten his own responsibilities in regard to Crane as to marry him to Mrs. Falkener's daughter, an idea in which Mrs. Falkener cordially agreed.

"You must make a point of staying with him, Solon," she was now murmuring into that gentleman's rather large ear, "if, as I fear, he actually takes this house. You have never seen such an extraordinary group of servants—except the butler. Do you suppose it could be a plot, a blackmailing scheme of some sort? The cook—Well, my dear Solon, a pocket Venus, a stage ingénue, with manicured nails! He was determined to engage her from the first. It seems very unsafe to me. A bachelor of Burton's means. You must stay by him, Solon. In fact," she added, "I think we had better both stay by him. Poor boy, he has no idea of taking care of himself."

"He can be very obstinate," said his lawyer. "But I fancy you exaggerate the dangers. You are unaccustomed to any but the very highest type of English servant. They are probably nothing worse than incompetent."

"Wait till you see the cook!" answered Mrs. Falkener portentously.

Tucker looked away over the darkening landscape.

"Dear me," he thought to himself. "What a mountain she makes of a mole-hill! How every one exaggerates—except trained minds!"

In Tucker's opinion all trained minds were legal.