Taking this as an order, she sank back into her chair again. He stood confronting her as before, one hand resting lightly on the table.
“Nothink so good won’t ’ave ’appened in this ’ouse since old Mrs. Allerton went to work and died.”
Letty’s eyes shone with their tiny fires, not in pleasure but in wonder.
“When old servants is good, they’re good, but even when they’re good, there’s times when you can’t ’elp wishin’ as ’ow the Lord ’ud be pleased to tyke them to ’Imself.”
He allowed this to sink in before going further.
“The men’s all right, for the most part. Indoor work comes natural to ’em, and they’ll swing it without no complynts. But with the women it’s kick, kick, kick, and when they’re worn theirselves out with kickin’, they’ll begin to kick again. What’s plye for a man, for them ain’t nothink but slyvery.”
Letty listened as one receiving revelations from another world.
“I ain’t what they call a woman-’ater. I believe as God made woman for a purpose. Only I can’t bring myself to think as the human race ’as rightly found out yet what that purpose is. God’s wyes is always dark, and when it comes to women, they’re darker nor they are elsewheres. One thing I do know, and we’ll be a lot more comfortable when more of us finds it out—that God never made women for the ’ome.”
In spite of her awe of him, Letty found this doctrine difficult to accept.