‘I will gladly endure one of them for the sake of the other,’ I replied.
‘No compliments, please,’ she returned, and left the room.
In about half an hour she re-appeared, accompanied by Miss Brotherton. They were in white wrappers, with their dresses shortened a little, and their hair tucked under mob caps. Miss Brotherton looked like a lady’s-maid, Clara like a lady acting a lady’s-maid. I assumed the command at once, pointing out to what heaps in the other room those I had grouped in this were to be added, and giving strict injunctions as to carrying only a few at once, and laying them down with care in regularly ordered piles. Clara obeyed with a mock submission, Miss Brotherton with a reserve which heightened the impression of her dress. I was instinctively careful how I spoke to Clara, fearing to compromise her, but she seemed all at once to change her rôle, and began to propose, object, and even insist upon her own way, drawing from me the threat of immediate dismission from my service, at which her companion laughed with an awkwardness showing she regarded the pleasantry as a presumption. Before one o’clock, the first room was almost empty. Then the great bell rang, and Clara, coming from the auxiliary chamber, put her head in at the door.
‘Won’t you come to luncheon?’ she said, with a sly archness, looking none the less bewitching for a smudge or two on her lovely face, or the blackness of the delicate hands which she held up like two paws for my admiration.
‘In the servants’ hall? Workmen don’t sit down with ladies and gentlemen. Did Miss Brotherton send you to ask me?’
She shook her head.
‘Then you had better come and lunch with me.’
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘I hope you will some day honour my little fragment of a house. It is a curious old place,’ I said.
‘I don’t like musty old places,’ she replied.