hat. It wasn’t here when I done the room on Thursday morning,’ I says. And ‘Oh!’ she says, ‘but I dare say you wouldn’t see it. You don’t spend much time doing a room, do you?’ And with that she draws her finger along the mantelshelf and looks at it. As though I had time on a morning like this to take off all them ornaments and put them back, with the police only unlocking the room the night before. ‘If the vicar and his lady are satisfied that’s all that matters, I think, miss,’ I said. And she laughs and goes out of the windows and says, ‘Oh! but are you sure they are?’ ”
“I see,” I said.
“And there it is! A girl has her feelings! I’m sure I’d work my fingers to the bone for you and the missus. And if she wants a newfangled dish tried, I’m always ready to try it.”
“I’m sure you are,” I said soothingly.
“But she must have heard something or she wouldn’t have said what she did. And if I don’t give satisfaction I’d rather go. Not that I take any notice of what Miss Protheroe says. She’s not loved up at the Hall, I can tell you. Never a please or a thank you, and everything scattered right and left. I wouldn’t set any store by Miss Lettice Protheroe myself for all that Mr. Dennis is so set upon her. But she’s the kind that can always twist a young gentleman round her little finger.”
During all this, Mary had been extracting eyes from potatoes with such energy that they had been flying round the kitchen like hailstones. At this moment one hit me in the eye and caused a momentary pause in the conversation.
“Don’t you think,” I said, as I dabbed my eye with my handkerchief, “that you have been rather too inclined to take offence where none is meant? You know, Mary, your mistress will be very sorry to lose you.”