Mrs. Arb was extremely cheerful, kindly and energetic over the affair of the trunk, and Elsie extremely apologetic.
"Now nip your apron on and come down as quick as you can—there might be a customer. You must remember I'm not mistress here until to-morrow. I'm only a visitor." Thus spoke Mrs. Arb gaily and a little breathless at the door of the small bedroom which Elsie was to share with a vast collection of various sermons in eighty volumes, some State Trials in twenty volumes, and a lot of other piled sensationalism.
When Elsie, still impressed by the fact of having a new home and by Mrs. Arb's benevolent demeanour, came rather self-consciously downstairs in a perfectly new apron (bought for this great occasion), Mrs. Arb went to the foot of the stairs to meet her, and employing a confidential and mysterious tone, said:
"Now don't forget all I told you about that cleaning business to-morrow, will you?"
"Oh, no, 'm. I suppose it will be all right?" Elsie's brow puckered with conscientiousness.
Mrs. Arb laughed amiably.
"What do you mean, my girl—'it'll be all right'? You must remember that when I come back to-morrow I come back Mrs. Earlforward. And you'll call me 'Mrs. Earlforward' too."
"I'd sooner call you mum, 'm, if it's all the same to you."
"Of course. But when you're speaking about me."
"I shall have to get into it, 'm."