“Did you hear what I said to you? I can’t allow you to speak to me as if I were your equal. I am a lady by birth and education. I have consented to take charge of this establishment in order that it may be properly conducted. I shall have to begin by teaching the servants how to behave themselves, evidently. Now, send some one to carry my box and conduct me to my apartment.”
“Yes, madam.”
I thought to myself, “Well, this is a nice old lady the master’s got hold of. She and missus won’t hit it off together long;” but, of course, it was no business of mine, so I asked one of the upholsterer’s men to give me a hand, and we carried her box upstairs, and I showed the old lady her room.
It was at the top of the house, next the servants’ bedrooms. Before she got up she was out of breath.
“Oh!” she said, “the attics! This is an insult to which I cannot submit. I am a lady; your master does not seem to be aware of the fact.”
I said I didn’t know anything about that. This was the room. So I got her box in, and gave her a candle, and left her muttering to herself, and taking off her bonnet in front of the looking-glass, and putting on a most wonderful cap, which she took out of the blue bonnet-box she had carried in her hand.
It was a big black cap, with cherries and red-currants and grapes sticking up all over it, and she looked so odd with it on, I had to go away, for fear I should burst out laughing, and hurt her feelings.
In about half an hour the old lady came downstairs into the kitchen, and everybody stared at her. It was most uncomfortable for us all to have a strange housekeeper, and such an eccentric one, walking in right in the middle of the preparations for a party, and beginning to missus it over us at once, and to talk like a duchess to us.
There were a lot of men about the kitchen, which made it worse, the upholsterer’s men, and the confectioner’s men, who were finishing off the things for supper, and the florist’s man with the plants and the flowers; and when that extraordinary old lady walked in, with her wonderful cap, and began to go on at us at once, and order us to do this and to do that, and to say we were a common lot, and not one of us knew how things ought to be done, I wondered what would be the end of it.
Before the company came, master went to have a look at the ball-room to see if everything was right, while missus was dressing, and there he found the old lady, who had gone upstairs, and was talking to the upholsterer’s men, who were finishing off, and telling them about how different things were when she was young, and the men were what is called “getting at her,” and encouraging her to talk.