Once more he allowed her time to assimilate this parable.
“Now if madam would only think of ’erself as called in youth to reign hover this ’ouse––”
“Oh, but I couldn’t!”
“And yet it’s madam’s duty, now that she’s married to its ’ead––”
“Yes, but he didn’t marry me like that. He married me—all queer like. This was the way.”
She poured out the story, while Steptoe listened quietly. There being no elements in it of the kind he called “shydy,” he found it romantic. No one had ever suspected the longings for romance which had filled his heart and imagination when he was a poor little scullion boy; but the memory of them, with some of the reality, was still fresh in his hidden inner self. Now it seemed as if remotely and vicariously romance might be coming to him after all, through the boy he adored.
On her tale his only comment was to say: “I’ve been readin’—I’m a great reader,” he threw in parenthetically, “wonderful exercise for the mind, and learns you things which you wouldn’t be likely to ’ear tell of—but I’ve been readin’ about a king—I’ll show you ’is nyme in the book—what fell in love with a beggar myde––”
“Oh, but Mr. Allerton didn’t fall in love with me.”
“That remynes to be seen.”