The cook looked on with the expression natural to cooks in such circumstances, and Virginia, who had never made sandwiches, but knew what they ought to taste like, was disconcerted by their appearance when she had done.
‘It’s how the master likes them,’ she said rather uncertainly, as she herself arranged the strange-shaped things in the aluminium box they were to travel in.
‘Yes, m’m,’ said the cook.
She came out of the kitchen and into her own part of the house with a sigh of relief. It was always a relief to get through those baize doors. The servants made her shy. She wasn’t able, somehow, to get into touch with them. What she aimed at in her relations with them was perfect justice and kindness, combined with dignity. She most earnestly wished to do her duty by them, and in return it seemed merely fair to demand that they should do their duty by her. Her mother’s reign had been lax. She had found, on looking into things on her marriage, many abuses. These she had removed one by one, and after much trouble had put the whole household on a decent economic footing.
Up to now the servants hadn’t quite settled down to it, but her mother-in-law, who was experienced in frugalities, assured her they would in time, and be all the happier and the better for it. She had gone so far as to explain to them, her serious young face firm in the belief that once they were told they would understand and even co-operate, that the more carefully the house was run the more would the poor, the sick, and the aged of the parish benefit. ‘No one,’ she said, earnestly striving to make herself clear, ‘has more than a certain amount of money to spend, and if it is spent in one way it can’t possibly be spent in another.’
The servants were silent.
She even tried, overcoming her shyness, to talk to them of noble aims, and love for one’s fellow-creatures.
The servants continued silent.
She went further, and in a voice that faltered because of her extreme desire to run away and hide, talked to them of God.
The servants became really terribly silent.