“Come, Mrs. Jebb,” said Andy, unable to leave well alone, “you gave me notice, you know. And you’ll find heaps of other places.”
“Where?” said Mrs. Jebb, turning on him with a sort of desperate sincerity that made all her foolish little affectations fall from her like a mantle, leaving the real woman—old, defenceless, incapable—so nakedly plain for Andy to see that he felt almost ashamed.
“Lady-cooks,” he murmured—“there’s a constant demand for lady-cooks.”
“I’m not very strong,” sobbed Mrs. Jebb. “I couldn’t take an ordinary place. No—I shall have to go back to my brother—and his wife——”
“Well, that will be pleasanter for you—with relations,” suggested Andy cheerfully.
Then the bitterness of the unwanted—which is no less terrible because they do not deserve to be wanted—gripped Mrs. Jebb’s soul and made her jerk out in breathless sentences—
“Pleasant! To sit down to meals all the rest of your life where you have to say you don’t like anything tasty because there’s never enough for three!”
Well, it was no reason for retaining an incompetent housekeeper, but there is something so helplessly touching about every real self, when the outside self which hides it fades away, that no wonder Andy said, after a pause—
“All right, Mrs. Jebb. Have another go and see how you manage.”
For a moment longer Mrs. Jebb’s real self remained visible while she leaned her head on the door-post and mopped her eyes in speechless relief and thankfulness; then it disappeared, and she patted her fringe with a fluttered—