"Only that one," said Mary, apologetically. "It is full of books. The other is not half so heavy."
"Oh, it ain't the weight, miss!" returned the footman, who had not intended she should hear the remark. "I believe Mr. Cabman and myself will prove equal to the occasion."
With that the book-box came down a great bump on the pavement, and presently both were in the hall, the one on the top of the other. Mary paid the cabman, who asked not a penny more than his fare; he departed with thanks; the facetious footman closed the door, told her to take a seat, and went away full of laughter, to report that the young person had brought a large library with her to enliven the dullness of her new situation.
Mrs. Perkin smiled crookedly, and, in a tone of pleasant reproof, desired her laughter-compressing inferior not to forget his manners.
"Please, ma'am, am I to leave the young woman sittin' up there all by herself in the cold?" he asked, straightening himself up. "She do look a rayther superior sort of young person," he added, "and the 'all-stove is dead out."
"For the present, Castle," replied Mrs. Perkin.
She judged it wise to let the young woman have a lesson at once in subjection and inferiority.
Mrs. Perkin was a rather tall, rather thin, quite straight, and very dark-complexioned woman. She always threw her head back on one side and her chin out on the other when she spoke, and had about her a great deal of the authoritative, which she mingled with such consideration toward her subordinates as to secure their obedience to her, while she cultivated antagonism to her mistress. She had had a better education than most persons of her class, but was morally not an atom their superior in consequence. She never went into a new place but with the feeling that she was of more importance by far than her untried mistress, and the worthier person of the two. She entered her service, therefore, as one whose work it was to take care of herself against a woman whose mistress she ought to have been, had Providence but started her with her natural rights. At the same time, she would have been almost as much offended by a hint that she was not a Christian, as she would have been by a doubt whether she was a lady. For, indeed, she was both, if a great opinion of herself constituted the latter, and a great opinion of going to church constituted the former.
She had not been taken into Hesper's confidence with regard to Mary, had discovered that "a young person" was expected, but had learned nothing of what her position in the house was to be. She welcomed, therefore, this opportunity both of teaching Mrs. Redmain—she never called her her mistress , while severely she insisted on the other servants' speaking of her so—the propriety of taking counsel with her housekeeper and of letting the young person know in time that Mrs. Perkin was in reality her mistress.
The relation of the upper servants of the house to their employers was more like that of the managers of an hotel to their guests. The butler, the lady's-maid, and Mr. Redmain's body-servant, who had been with him before his marriage, and was supposed to be deep in his master's confidence, ate with the housekeeper in her room, waited upon by the livery and maid-servants, except the second cook: the first cook only came to superintend the cooking of the dinner, and went away after. To all these Mrs. Perkin was careful to be just; and, if she was precise even to severity with them, she was herself obedient to the system she had established—the main feature of which was punctuality. She not only regarded punctuality as the foremost of virtues, but, in righteous moral sequence, made it the first of her duties; and the benefit everybody reaped. For nothing oils the household wheels so well as this same punctuality. In a family, love, if it be strong, genuine, and patent, will make up for anything; but, where there is no family and no love, the loss of punctuality will soon turn a house into the mere pouch of a social inferno . Here the master and mistress came and went, regardless of each other, and of all household polity; but their meals were ready for them to the minute, when they chose to be there to eat them; the carriage came round like one of the puppets on the Strasburg clock; the house was quiet as a hospital; the bells were answered—all except the door-bell outside of calling hours—with swiftness; you could not soil your fingers anywhere—not even if the sweep had been that same morning; the manners of the servants—when serving —were unexceptionable; but the house was scarcely more of a home than one of the huge hotels characteristic of the age.