With this bejewelled lady Eileen passed her days either on the Hump, or in the Black Hole, or in the environs, and but for her sense of humour and her power of leading a second life above or below her first, her tenure of the post would have been short. The most delicate repetitions of mispronounced words, the subtlest substitution of society phrases for factory idioms, fell blunted against an impenetrable ignorance and self-sufficiency. Short of dropping the pose of companion and boldly rapping a pupil on the knuckles, there seemed to her no way of modifying her mistress. "Who can refine what Fortune has gilded?" she asked herself in humorous despair. The appearance of Mr. Maper at dinner brought little relief. It was a strange meal in the lordly dining room—three covers laid at one end of the long mahogany table, under the painted stare of somebody else's ancestors. Eileen's girlish enjoyment of the prodigal fare was spoiled by her furtive watch on the hostess's fork. Nor did the alderman contribute ease, for he was on pins lest the governess should reveal her true mission, and on needles lest his wife should reveal her true depths. Likewise he worried Eileen to drink his choicest wines. Vintages that she felt her father would have poised on his tongue in mystic clucking ecstasy stood untasted in a regiment of little glasses at her elbow.
She repaid them, however, by adroit educational remarks.
"How stupid of me again!" she said once. "I held out my hock glass for the champagne! Do tell me again which is which, dear Mrs. Maper."
"I suppose you never had a drink of champagne in your life afore you come here," said Mrs. Maper, beamingly. And she indicated the port glass.
"No, no, Lucy, don't play pranks on a stranger," her husband put in tactfully. "It's this glass, Miss O'Keeffe."
"Oh, thank you!" Eileen gushed. "And this is what? Sherry?"
"No, port," replied Mr. Maper, scarcely able to repress a wink.
"You'll have to tell me again to-morrow night," said Eileen, enjoying her own comedy powers. "My poor father tried to teach me the difference between bird's-eye and shag, but I could never remember."
"Ah, Bob's the boy for teaching you that," guffawed the mill owner. "I stick to half-crown cigars myself." His wife shot him a dignified rebuke, as though he were forgetting his station in undue familiarity.
Afterwards Eileen wondered who Bob was, but at the moment she could think of nothing but the farcical complications arising from the idea of Mrs. Maper's providing Mr. Maper with a male companion secretly to improve his manners. Of course the two companions would fall in love with each other.