Letty sprang up in alarm. “A—what?”
“A lydy what’ll myke a call. Oh, madam don’t need to be afryde. She’s an old friend o’ Mr. Rash’s, and’ll want, no doubt, to be a friend o’ madam too.”
“But what does she know about me?”
“Mr. Rash must ’a told ’er. She spoke to me just now on the telephone, and seemed to know everything. She said she’d be ’ere this afternoon about four-thirty, if madam’d be so good as to give ’er a cup o’ tea.”
“Me?”
Having invented the cup of tea for his own purpose Steptoe went on to explain further. “It’s what the ’igh lydies mostly gives each other about ’alf past four or five o’clock, and madam couldn’t homit it without seemin’ as if she didn’t know what’s what. It’ll be very important for madam to tyke ’er position from the start. If the lydy is comin’ friendly like she’d be ’urt if madam wasn’t friendly too.”
Letty had seen the giving and taking of tea in more than one scene in the movies, and had also, from a discreet corner, witnessed the enacting of it right in the “set” on the studio lot. She remembered one time in particular when Luciline Lynch, the star in Our Crimson Sins, had driven Frank Redgar, the director, almost out of his senses by her inability to get the right turn of the wrist. Letty, too, had been almost 191 out of her senses with the longing to be in Luciline Lynch’s place, to do the thing in what was obviously the way. But now that she was confronted with the opportunity in real life she saw the situation otherwise.
“And I won’t be able to talk right,” was the difficulty she raised next.
“That’ll be a chance for madam to listen and ketch on. She’s horfly quick, madam is, and by listenin’ to Miss Walbrook, that’s the lydy’s nyme, and listenin’ to ’erself—” He broke off to emphasize this line of suggestion—“it’s listenin’ to ’erself that’ll ’elp madam most. It’s a thing as ’ardly no one does. If they did they’d be ’orrified at their squawky voices and bad pernounciation. If I didn’t listen to myself, why, I’d talk as bad as anyone, but—Well, as I sye, this’ll give madam a chance. All the time what Miss Walbrook is speakin’ madam can be listenin’ to ’er and listenin’ to ’erself too, and if she mykes mistykes this time she’ll myke fewer the next.”
Letty was pondering these hints as he continued.