"Jane-Ellen, I am seriously displeased."
At this the cook had a new idea. She extracted a very small handkerchief from her pocket and unfolded it as she said:
"Yes, indeed, sir, I suppose I did utterly forget my place, but it's rather hard on a poor girl—one day you treat her as if she were an empress, and the next, just as if she were mud under your feet." She pressed the handkerchief to her eyes.
"Jane-Ellen, you know I never treated you like mud under my feet."
"It was only last night in my brother's room," she went on tearfully, "that you scolded me for not being candid, and now at the very first candid thing I do, you turn on me like a lion—"
At this point Crane removed her hands and handkerchief from before her face, and revealed the fact, which he already suspected, that she was smiling all the time.
"Jane-Ellen, what a dreadful fraud you are!" he said quite seriously.
"No, Mr. Crane," answered Jane-Ellen, briskly tucking away her handkerchief, now that its usefulness was over. "No, I'm not exactly a fraud. It's just that that's my way of enjoying myself, and you know, sometimes I think other people enjoy it, too."
"Do you think Mrs. Falkener enjoys it?"
"I wasn't thinking of Mrs. Falkener," replied Jane-Ellen, with a twinkle in her eyes.