“Servants!” she cried in dismay.
“That’s all right.” His face broke into an excited smile. His little eyes danced and shone. “Everything,” he said.
“But the servants!” she said.
“You’ll see,” he said. “There’s a butler—and everything.”
“A butler!” He could now no longer restrain himself. “I was weeks,” he said, “getting it ready. Weeks and weeks.... It’s a house.... I’d had my eye on it before ever I met you. It’s a real good house, Elly....”
The fortunate girl-wife went on through Brompton to Walham Green with a stunned feeling. So women have felt in tumbrils. A nightmare of butlers, a galaxy of possible butlers, filled her soul.
No one was quite so big and formidable as Snagsby, towering up to receive her, upon the steps of the home her husband was so amazingly giving her.
The reader has already been privileged to see something of this house in the company of Lady Beach-Mandarin. At the top of the steps stood Mrs. Crumble, the new and highly recommended cook-housekeeper in her best black silk flounced and expanded, and behind her peeped several neat maids in caps and aprons. A little valet-like under-butler appeared and tried to balance Snagsby by hovering two steps above him on the opposite side of the Victorian mediæval porch.
Assisted officiously by Snagsby and amidst the deferential unhelpful gestures of the under-butler, Sir Isaac handed his wife out of the car. “Everything all right, Snagsby?” he asked brusquely if a little breathless.
“Everything in order, Sir Isaac.”