“So what do you sye to that?” Mrs. Courage demanded of Steptoe; “you that’s always so ready to defend my young lord?”
Steptoe was prepared to stand back to back with his employer. “I don’t defend ’im. I’m not called on to defend ’im. It’s Mr. Rashleigh’s ’ouse. Any guest of ’is must be your guest and mine.”
“And what about Miss Walbrook, ’er that’s to be missus ’ere in the course of a few weeks?”
Steptoe colored, frostily. “She’s not missus ’ere yet; and if she ever comes, there’ll be stormy weather for all of us. New missuses don’t generally get on with old servants like us—that’s been in the family 46 for so many years—but when they don’t, it ain’t them as gets notice.”
A bell rang sharply. Steptoe sprang to attention.
“There’s Mr. Rashleigh now. Don’t you women go to mykin’ a to-do. There’s lots o’ troubles that ’ud never ’ave ’appened if women ’ad been able to ’old their tongues.”
“But I suppose, Steptoe, you don’t deny that there’s such a thing as right.”
“I don’t deny that there’s such a thing as right, Mrs. Courage, but I only wonder if you knows more about it than the rest of us.”
In Allerton’s room Steptoe found the young master of the house half dressed. Standing before a mirror, he was brushing his hair. His face and eyes, the reflection of which Steptoe caught in the glass, were like those of a man on the edge of going insane.
The old valet entered according to his daily habit and without betraying the knowledge of anything unusual. All the same his heart was sinking, as old hearts sink when beloved young ones are in trouble. The boy was his darling. He had been with his father for ten years before the lad was born, and had watched his growth with a more than paternal devotion. “’E’s all I ’ave,” he often said to himself, and had been known to let out the fact in the afore-mentioned group of English upper servants, a small but exclusive circle in the multiplex life of New York.