THIN ICE
I THINK it was the finger-marks on the china cabinet that first brought me to a realizing sense of Charlotte's growing deficiencies. I saw it all in a flash then. The way you see the hidden face in a picture puzzle when you do see it. After that, I could scarcely see anything else. I was astonished that it had escaped me so long. To be sure, an indefinable sense of uneasiness had been gnawing at the edges of my consciousness for some time, and I knew I had cowardly refused to face it.
But now I could no longer veil the horrid fact that Charlotte, The Good, the envy of my friends, the boasted treasure of our household, was beginning to ravel out and run down like any ordinary, native-born, garden-variety of maid. It was difficult to adjust myself to such an unwelcome truth. I had leaned so long and so comfortably upon her virtues that life had begun to broaden out before me like a primrose path somewhat as it had before I
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