"Yes, and with a lot of finely trained colored women in the market,
where would you girls from the college be?" the other woman asked,
not without a spice of mischievous enjoyment.

"We would be a finer type of servant, for more fastidious people,"
Justine scored by answering soberly. "You could hardly expect a
colored girl to take the responsibility of much actual managing, I
should suppose. There would always be a certain proportion of people
who would prefer white servants."

"Perhaps there are," Mrs. Salisbury admitted dubiously. She felt,
with a sense of triumph, that she had given Justine a pretty strong
hint against "uppishness." But Justine was innocently impervious to
hints. As a matter of fact, she was not an exceptionally bright
girl; literal, simple, and from very plain stock, she was merely
well trained in her chosen profession. Sometimes she told her
mistress of her fellow-graduates, taking it for granted that Mrs.
Salisbury entirely approved of all the ways of the American School
of Domestic Science.

"There's Mabel Frost," said Justine one day. "She would have
graduated when I did, but she took the fourth year's work. She
really is of a very fine family; her father is a doctor. And she has
a position with a doctor's family now, right near here, in New Troy.
There are just two in family, and both are doctors, and away all
day. So Mabel has a splendid chance to keep up her music."

"Music?" Mrs. Salisbury asked sharply.

"Piano. She's had lessons all her life. She plays very well, too."