incompetent⁷¹ maids had been adding considerably⁷² to the expense—and little to the comfort—of the household. Helen, as a mistress, was not a success. She understood neither her own duties nor those of the maid—which resulted in short periods of poor service and frequent changes.

 

July came with its stifling⁷³ heat, and Dorothy Elizabeth, now twenty months old, showed a daily increasing disapproval⁷⁴ of life in general and of her own existence in particular. Helen, worn and worried, and half sick from care and loss of sleep, grew day by day more fretful, more difficult to get along with. Burke, also half sick from loss of sleep, and consumed with a fierce, inward rebellion against everything and everybody, including himself, was no less difficult to get along with.

 

Of course this state of affairs could not continue forever. The tension had to snap sometime. And it snapped—over a bottle of ink in a baby's hand.

 

It happened on Bridget's "afternoon out," when Helen was alone with the baby. Dorothy Elizabeth,[Pg 137] propped⁷⁵ up in her high-chair beside the dining-room table, where her mother was writing a letter, reached covetous⁷⁶ hands toward the fascinating little fat black bottle. The next instant a wild shout of glee and an inky tide surging from an upside-down bottle, held high above a golden head, told that the quest had been successful.

 

Things happened then very fast. There were a dismayed cry from Helen, half a-dozen angry spats⁷⁸ on a tiny hand, a series of shrieks⁷⁹ from Dorothy Elizabeth, and a rapidly spreading inky pall over baby, dress, table, rug, and Helen's new frock.

 

At that moment Burke appeared in the door.

 

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