“Mr. Rashleigh will ’ave to do that very selfsame 60 thing. Not another night will none of us sleep hunder this paternal roof with them that their very presence is a houtrage. ’Enery Steptoe was always a time-server, and a time-server ’e will be, but as for us women, we shall see the new missus in goin’ in to give ’er notice. Not a month’s notice, it won’t be. This range as I’ve cooked at for nearly thirty years I shall cook at no more, not so much as for lunch. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! What’s the world comin’ to?”
In spite of her strength of character Mrs. Courage threw her apron over her head and burst into tears. Jane was weeping already.
“There, there, aunt,” Nettie begged, patting her relative between the shoulders. “What’s the good o’ goin’ on like that just because a silly ass ’as married beneath ’im?”
Mrs. Courage pulled her apron from her face to cry out with passion:
“If ’e was goin’ to disgryce ’imself like that, why couldn’t ’e ’a taken you?”
So Steptoe waited on Letty himself, bringing in the grapefruit, the coffee, the egg, and the toast, and seeing that she knew how to deal with each in the proper forms. He was so brooding, so yearning, so tactful, as he bent over her, that she was never at a loss as to the fork or spoon she ought to use, or the minute at which to use it. Under his protection Letty ate. She ate, first because she was young and hungry, and then because she felt him standing between her and all vague terrors. By the time she had finished, he moved in front of her, where he could speak as one human being to another.
Taking an empty plate from the table to put it on the sideboard, he said: “I ’ope madam is chyngin’ ’er mind about leavin’ us.”
Letty glanced up shyly in spite of being somewhat reassured. “What’ud be the good of my changin’ my mind when—when I’m not fit to stay?”
“Madam means not fit in the sense that––”