"Brother Jerome will come home with me to-night. Cherry," said Esther. "I may be late—I'm sure to be late—you needn't sit up."
"But I'd like to see him. Slums or no slums, he has given me a pair of stiff arms, and I want to find out if he's worth them."
"Oh, he's nothing to look at. Just a tall, thin, starved-looking man. He'll be shy, maybe, of coming, and you'd much better go to bed. You'll leave some supper ready in his room."
"What shall I leave?"
"Oh, a jug of beer and some cheese, and the cold meat and some bread and butter. That's all, he's accustomed to roughing it."
"My word, you call that roughing. Then the slums can't be so bad. I always thought there was an uncommon fuss made about them. Now I'll get to 'Lord Tom Noddy,' and learn off a good bit before tea time; you might hear me recite if you had a mind, Essie."
CHAPTER XLI.
"Oh, yes, she's the sweetest missus in the world!"
That was the universal opinion of the servants who worked for Valentine Wyndham. They never wanted to leave her, they never grumbled about her, nor thought her gentle orders hard. The nurse, the cook, the housemaid, stayed on, the idea of change did not occur to them.