ordered an oxygen tank opened in the room after the cleaner was used and
she'd have gone away happy.

Of course Mr. Pierce was most polite. He'd listen to their
complaints--and they were always complaining, that's part of the
regime--with a puzzled face, trying to understand, but he couldn't.
He hadn't a nerve in his body. Once, when one of the dining-room girls
dropped a tray of dishes and half the women went to bed with headache
from the nervous shock, he never even looked up, but went on with his
dinner, and the only comment he made afterward was to tell the head
waitress to see that Annie didn't have to pay breakage--that the
trays were too heavy for a woman, anyhow. As Miss Cobb said, he was
impossible.

Well, as if I didn't have my hands full with getting meals to the
shelter-house, and trying to find a house doctor, and wondering how long
it would be before "Julia" came face to face with Dick Carter somewhere
or other, and trying to keep one eye on Thoburn while I kept Mr. Pierce
straight with the other--that day, during luncheon, Mike the bath man
came out to the spring-house and made a howl about his wages. He'd been
looking surly for two days.

"What about your wages?" I snapped. "Aren't you getting what you've
always had?"

"No tips!" he said sulkily. "Only a few taking baths--only one daily,
and that's that man Jennings. There's no use talking, Miss Minnie, I've
got to have a double percentage on that man or you'll have to muzzle
him. He--he's dangerous."