It was the lady of the wardrobe who advanced at last, slowly, with dignity, her hands genteelly clasped in front of her. She seemed to be saying, “No, we don’t want any,” or, “I’m sorry we’ve nothing to give you,” by her very walk. Letty, with her gift for dramatic interpretation, could see this, though Steptoe, familiar as he was with ladies whom he would have classed as “’igher,” was not daunted. He too went forward, meeting madam half way.
Of what was said between them Letty could hear nothing, but the expression on the lady’s face was 117 dissuasive. She was telling Steptoe that he had come to the wrong place, while Steptoe was saying no. From time to time the lady would send a glance toward Letty, not in disdain, but in perplexity. It was perplexity which reached its climax when Steptoe drew from an inside pocket an impressive roll of bills.
The lady looked at the bills, but she also looked at Letty. The honor of a house like Margot’s is not merely in making money; it is in its clientèle. To have a poor little waif step in from the street....
And yet it was because she was a poor little waif that she interested the ladies looking on. She was so striking an exception to their rule that her very coming in amazed them. One of the two who had remained near the open drawer came forward into conference with her colleague, adding her dissuasions to those which Steptoe had already refused to listen to.
“There are plenty of other places to which you could go,” Letty heard this second lady say, “and probably do better.”
Steptoe smiled, that old man’s smile which was rarely ineffective. “Madam don’t ’ave to tell me as there’s plenty of other plyces to which I could go; but there’s none where I could do as well.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I’m butler to a ’igh gentleman what ’e used to entertyne quite a bit when ’is mother was alive. I’ve listened to lydies talkin’ at tyble. No one can’t tell me. I know.”
Both madams smiled. Each shot another glance at Letty. It was plain that they were curious as to her identity. One of them made a venture.