After she had gone, Mrs. Van Valkenberg stood watching the car until it disappeared, and then snatching her bright-eyed Pomeranian, she ran her fingers absently through his soft hair.
"How ridiculous," she said, "how absolutely ridiculous!"
CHAPTER XII
MISS HATCH SHOWS SHE LOVES A LOVER
When Armitage entered the servants' dining-room he found the head footman, who presided, in something of a quandary as to where he should place him. Emilia, Miss Wellington's maid, had of course lost no time in imparting to all with whom she was on terms of confidence, that the new chauffeur was the same with whom her mistress had flirted on the General. Consequently, Armitage was at once the object of interest, suspicion, respect, and jealousy. But the head footman greeted him cordially enough and after shifting and rearranging seats, indicated a chair near the lower end of the table, which Armitage accepted with a nod. He was immensely interested.
The talk was of cricket. Some of the cottagers whose main object in life was aping the ways of the English, had organized a cricket team, and as there were not enough of them for an opposing eight, they had been compelled to resort to the grooms. There were weekly matches in which the hirelings invariably triumphed. One of the Wellington grooms, an alert young cockney, was the bowler, and his success, as well as the distinguished social station of his opponents, appeared to Armitage to have quite turned his pert little head.
There was a pretty Irish chambermaid at Jack's elbow whose eyes were as gray as the stones in the Giants' Causeway, but glittering now with scorn. For heretofore, Henry Phipps had been an humble worshipper. She permitted several of his condescending remarks to pass without notice, but finally when he answered a question put by another groom with a bored monosyllable, the girl flew to the latter's defence.
"'Yes' and 'no,' is it?" she blazed. "Henry Phipps, ye 're like the ass in the colored skin—not half as proud as ye 're painted. A bowler, ye are! But ye take yer hat off after the game, just the same, and bowl out yer masters with a 'thank ye, sur; my misthake!' Ye grovellin' thing, ya!"
"Really," yawned Henry in his rich dialect.