“Oh! of course,” said Mrs. Povey, primly, just as if Maggie was not the central supporting pillar of the house, just as if Maggie had not assisted at her birth, just as if the end of the world had not abruptly been announced, just as if St. Luke’s Square were not inconceivable without Maggie. “But why—”
“Well, Mrs. Povey, I’ve been a-thinking it over in my kitchen, and I said to myself: ‘If there’s going to be one change there’d better be two,’ I says. Not but what I wouldn’t work my fingers to the bone for ye, Miss Constance.”
Here Maggie began to cry into the tray.
Constance looked at her. Despite the special muslin of that day she had traces of the slatternliness of which Mrs. Baines had never been able to cure her. She was over forty, big, gawky. She had no figure, no charms of any kind. She was what was left of a woman after twenty-two years in the cave of a philanthropic family. And in her cave she had actually been thinking things over! Constance detected for the first time, beneath the dehumanized drudge, the stirrings of a separate and perhaps capricious individuality. Maggie’s engagements had never been real to her employers. Within the house she had never been, in practice, anything but ‘Maggie’—an organism. And now she was permitting herself ideas about changes!
“You’ll soon be suited with another, Mrs. Povey,” said Maggie. “There’s many a—many a—” She burst into sobs.
“But if you really want to leave, what are you crying for, Maggie?” asked Mrs. Povey, at her wisest. “Have you told mother?”
“No, miss,” Maggie whimpered, absently wiping her wrinkled cheeks with ineffectual muslin. “I couldn’t seem to fancy telling your mother. And as you’re the mistress now, I thought as I’d save it for you when you come home. I hope you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Povey.”
“Of course I’m very sorry. You’ve been a very good servant. And in these days—”
The child had acquired this turn of speech from her mother. It did not appear to occur to either of them that they were living in the sixties.
“Thank ye, miss.”