“Oh, Julian, what do you think! That girl Ann has been most outrageously insolent. I found her just now trying on my best hat; and when I remonstrated, she said the most awful things—insinuating—I can’t tell you what. I think she must be crazy, for I’m sure she doesn’t drink. Anyhow, she shall depart within the hour. So please give me one pound, thirteen shillings, and four pence.”
“Oh, nonsense!” he exclaimed. “Why mind her, Nell? It’s only her ignorance. The mental calibre of these rustics is abnormally low.”
“No, no, it’s not her ignorance!” retorted his wife. “On the contrary, Annie implies that she knows a great deal on some subject about us—but what it is she refuses to divulge.”
“But, my dear, how will you manage without her?”
“Oh, I’ll get in the laundress’s sister. I hear she’s been in service. Sooner than keep Annie, I would do the work myself.”
That afternoon Annie departed. As she bounced into the room to receive her wages, she said with a touch of sarcasm:
“I’ll not trouble you for a character. A character from this house would be no use to me—and only stand in my way. I hear you are getting Maggie King as parlourmaid—and when she comes there will be a pair of you!”
Then, seizing the one pound, thirteen shillings, and four pence, she swept out, to where a ruddy-faced young man was waiting to carry her box. He accorded Mrs. Serle a sort of up-and-down glare, and was presumably the “Jim, who didn’t half like it!”
After this little domestic storm, things subsided at the cottage. Maggie King proved humble and amenable, but her mistress noticed that she and the cook were barely on speaking terms—and that Maggie took her meals alone in the pantry.
One evening, as they sat in the garden after dinner, Helen said to her husband: