"The butcher's very large," she observed.
"Honk!" Mrs. Martin remarked from some unprobed depths of an outraged woman. She was a little creature with an upturned nose and a grey complexion.
"Well it really is too large this time," said Millie. "Twenty pounds for a fortnight even in these days——"
"Certingly," said Mrs. Martin, speaking very quickly and rising a little on her toes. "Certingly if I'm charged with dishonesty, and it's implied that I'm stealing the butcher's meat and deceiving my mistress, who has always, so far as I know, trusted me and found no fault at all and has indeed commented not once nor twice on my being economical, but if so, well my notice is the thing that's wanted, I suppose, and——"
"Not at all," said Millie, still very gently. "There's no question of any one's dishonesty, Mrs. Martin. As you're housekeeper as well as cook you must know better than any one else whether this is an unusual amount or no. Perhaps it isn't. Perhaps——"
"I may have my faults," Mrs. Martin broke in, "there's few of us who haven't, but dishonesty I've never before been accused of; although the times are difficult and those who don't have to buy the things themselves may imagine that meat costs nothing, and you can have a joint every quarter of an hour without having to pay for it, still that hasn't been my experience, and to be called a dishonest woman after all my troubles and the things I've been through——"
"I never did call you a dishonest woman," said Millie. "Never for a moment. I only want you to examine this book with me and see whether we can't bring it down a little——"
"Dishonesty," pursued Mrs. Martin, rising still higher on her toes and apparently addressing Eve, "is dishonesty and there's no way out of it, either one's dishonest or one isn't and—if one is dishonest the sooner one leaves and finds a place where one isn't the better for all parties and the least said the sooner mended——"
"Would you mind," said Millie with an admirable patience, "just casting your eye over this book and telling me what you think of it? That's all I want really."
"Then I hope, Miss," said Mrs. Martin, "that you'll take back your accusation that I shouldn't like to go back to the kitchen suffering under, because I never have suffered patiently under such an accusation and I never will."