“By the way, what’s your name?” he asked, before they reached Fifth Avenue.
She told him, but was too overwhelmed with what she had undertaken to dare to ask him his.
Chapter IV
“Nao!”
The strong cockney negative was also an exclamation. It came from Mrs. Courage, the cook-housekeeper, who stood near the kitchen range making the coffee for breakfast. She was a woman who looked her name, born not merely to do battle, but to enjoy being in the midst of it.
Jane, the waitress, was the next to speak. “Nettie Duckett, you ought to be ashymed to sye them words, you that’s been taught to ’ope the best of everyone.”
Jane had fluttered in from the pantry with the covered dish for the toast. Jane still fluttered at her work, as she had done for the past thirty years. The late Mrs. Allerton had liked her about the table because she was swift, deft, and moved lightly. A thin little woman, with a profile resembling that of Punch’s Judy, and a smile of cheerful piety, she yielded to time only by a process of drying up.
Nettie Duckett was quick in her own defense, but breathless, too, from girlish laughter. “I can’t ’elp syin’ what I see, now can I? There she was ’arf dressed in the little back spare-room. Oh, the commonest thing! You wouldn’t ’a wanted to sweep ’er out with a broom.”