“When ’ud you begin?”
The bright spot deepened in each cheek. “I’ve begun already, if madam won’t think me steppin’ out o’ my plyce to sye so, in showin’ madam the spoons and forks for the different––”
Letty colored, too. “Yes, I saw that. I take it as very kind. But—” she looked at him with a puzzled knitting of the brows—“but what makes you take all this trouble for me?”
“I’ve two reasons, madam, but I’ll only tell you one of ’em just now. The other’ll keep. I’ll myke it known to you if—if all goes as I ’ope.” He straightened himself up. “I don’t often speak o’ this,” he continued, “because among us butlers and valets it wouldn’t be understood. Most of us is what’s known as conservative, all for the big families and the old wyes. Well, so am I—to a point. But––”
He moved a number of objects on the table before he could go on. “I wasn’t born to the plyce I ’old now,” he explained after getting his material at command. “I wasn’t born to nothink. I was what they calls in England a foundlin’—a byby what’s found—what ’is parents ’ave thrown awye. I don’t know who my father and mother was, or what was my real nyme. ’Enery Steptoe is just a nyme they give me at the Horphanage. But I won’t go into that. I’m just tryin’ to tell madam that my life was a ’ard one, quite a ’ard one, till I come to New York as footman for 63 Mr. Allerton’s father, and afterward worked up to be ’is valet and butler.”
He cleared his throat. Expressing ideals was not easy. “I ’ope madam will forgive me if I sye that what it learned me was a fellow-feelin’ with my own sort—with the poor. I’ve often wished as I could go out among the poor and ryse them up. I ain’t a socialist—a little bit of a anarchist perhaps, but nothink extreme—and yet—Well, if Mr. Rashleigh had married a rich girl, I would ’a tyken it as natural and done my best for ’im, but since ’e ’asn’t—Oh, can’t madam see? It’s—it’s a kind o’ pride with me to find some one like—like what I was when I was ’er age—out in the cold like—and bring ’er in—and ’elp ’er to tryne ’erself—so—so as—some day—to beat the best—them as ’as ’ad all the chances––”
He was interrupted by the tinkle of the telephone. It was a relief. He had said all he needed to say, all he knew how to say. Whether madam understood it or not he couldn’t tell, since she didn’t seize ideas quickly.
“If madam will excuse me now, I’ll go and answer that call.”
But Letty sprang up in alarm. “Oh, don’t leave me. Some of them women will blow in––”
“None of them women will come—” he threw a delicate emphasis on the word—“if madam’ll just sit down. They don’t mean to come. I’ll explyne that to madam when I come back, if she’ll only not leave this room.”