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THE TREASURE

KATHLEEN NORRIS




CHAPTER I


Lizzie, who happened to be the Salisbury's one servant at the time, was
wasteful. It was almost her only fault, in Mrs. Salisbury's eyes, for
such trifles as her habit of becoming excited and "saucy," in moments
of domestic stress, or to ask boldly for other holidays than her
alternate Sunday and Thursday afternoons, or to resent at all times the
intrusion of any person, even her mistress, into her immaculate
kitchen, might have been overlooked. Mrs. Salisbury had been keeping
house in a suburban town for twenty years; she was not considered an
exacting mistress. She was perfectly willing to forgive Lizzie what was
said in the hurried hours before the company dinner or impromptu lunch,
and to let Lizzie slip out for a walk with her sister in the evening,
and to keep out of the kitchen 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 oil--"

"Just get me a pencil, will you?" This was as usual. Mrs. Salisbury
would pencil a long list, would bite her lips thoughtfully, and sigh as
she read it over.

"Asparagus to-night, then. And, Lizzie, don't serve so much melted
butter with it as you did last time; there must have been a cupful of
melted butter. And, another time, save what little scraps of vegetables
there are left; they help out so at lunch--"

"There wasn't a saucerful of onions left last night," Lizzie would
assert, "and two cobs of corn, after I'd had my dinner. You couldn't do
much with those. And, as for butter on the asparagus"--Lizzie was very
respectful, but her tone would rise aggrievedly--"it was every bit
eaten, Mrs. Salisbury!"

"Yes, I know. But we mustn't let these young vandals eat us out of
house and home, you know," the mistress would say, feeling as if she
were doing something contemptibly small. And, worsted, she would return
to her paper. "But I don't care, we cannot afford it!" Mrs. Salisbury
would say to herself, when Lizzie had gone, and very thoughtfully she
would write out a check payable to "cash." "I used to use up little
odds and ends so deliciously, years ago!" she sometimes reflected
disconsolately. "And Kane always says we never live as well now as we
did then! He always praised my dinners."

Nowadays Mr. Salisbury was not so well satisfied. Lizzie rang the
changes upon roasted and fried meats, boiled and creamed vegetables,
baked puddings and canned fruits contentedly enough. She made cup cake
and sponge cake, sponge cake and cup cake all the year round. Nothing
was ever changed, no unexpected flavor ever surprised the palates of
the Salisbury family. May brought strawberry shortcake, December
cottage puddings, cold beef always made a stew; creamed codfish was
never served without baked potatoes. The Salisbury table was a
duplicate of some millions of other tables, scattered the length and
breadth of the land.

"And still the bills go up!" fretted Mrs. Salisbury.

"Well, why don't you fire her, Sally?" her husband asked, as he had
asked of almost every maid they had ever had--of lazy Annies, and
untidy Selmas, and ignorant Katies. And, as always, Mrs. Salisbury
answered patiently:

"Oh, Kane, what's the use? It simply means my going to Miss Crosby's
again, and facing that awful row of them, and beginning that I have
three grown children, and no other help--"

"Mother, have you ever had a perfect maid?" Sandy had asked earnestly
years before. Her mother spent a moment in reflection, arresting the
hand with which she was polishing silver. Alexandra was only sixteen
then, and mother and daughter were bridging a gap when there was no
maid at all in the Salisbury kitchen.

"Well, there was Libby," the mother answered at length, "the <DW52>
girl I had when you were born. She really was perfect, in a way. She
was a clean <DW54>, and such a cook! Daddy talks still of her fried
chicken and blueberry pies! And she loved company, too. But, you see,
Grandma Salisbury was with us then, and she paid a little girl to look
after you, so Libby had really nothing but the kitchen and dining-room
to care for. Afterward, just before Fred came, she got lazy and ugly,
and I had to let her go. Canadian Annie was a wonderful girl, too,"
pursued Mrs. Salisbury, "but we only had her two months. Then she got a
place where there were no children, and left on two days' notice. And
when I think of the others!--the Hungarian girl who boiled two pairs of
Fred's little brown socks and darkened the entire wash, sheets and
napkins and all! And the <DW52> girl who drank, and the girl who gave
us boiled rice for dessert whenever I forgot to tell her anything else!
And then Dad and I never will forget the woman who put pudding sauce on
his mutton--dear me, dear me!" And Mrs. Salisbury laughed out at the
memory. "Between her not knowing one thing, and not understanding a
word we said, she was pretty trying all around!" she presently added.
"And, of course, the instant you have them really trained they leave;
and that's the end of that! One left me the day Stan was born, and
another--and she was a nice girl, too--simply departed when you three
were all down with scarlet fever, and left her bed unmade, and the tea
cup and saucer from her breakfast on the end of the kitchen table!
Luckily we had a wonderful nurse, and she simply took hold and saved
the day."

"Isn't it a wonder that there isn't a training school for house
servants?" Sandy had inquired, youthful interest in her eye.

"There's no such thing," her mother assured her positively, "as getting
one who knows her business! And why? Why, because all the smart girls
prefer to go into factories, and slave away for three or four dollars a
week, instead of coming into good homes! Do Pearsall and Thompson ever
have any difficulty in