"Don't you remember the people she lived with before she came to us? They knew a poet, and gave dinner parties and had entrées and hors-d'oeuvres—hoary doves she calls them."
"But does she look after you well?"
"Yes," I said, "so long as I don't interfere with her cleaning. She is a great cleaner, that is her weakest point. Economy is another; she is too careful. Because I told her we were not rich she seems to think we must live on potato parings. Then she wears squeaky, high-heeled shoes, a pearl necklace, and puts on to her print bodies—as she calls them—innumerable patches. Against these bad qualities we must set her honesty, early rising, and devotion to me. She has taken me in hand since the day she entered the house. She thinks, deep down in her heart, that I am one of the poorest creatures she has met. She has compared me on different occasions to a love-lies-bleeding and a black prize Minorca hen. Yet I know she would go through fire and water for me. She dresses me in the morning with a gentleness and patience unsurpassed by any nurse, and the tenderness with which she lifts me from the bed to the couch has caused me to marvel. You ask me how she suits us. Now I come to think about it, I wouldn't be without Amelia Cockles for the world."
She entered as I finished speaking, and placed the tea-tray in front of me, eyeing Nanty with undisguised hostility.
Nanty returned the look with placidity.
"I s'pose you think I have been starving her?"
"No," said Nanty cheerfully, "I am sure you would do nothing of the kind. Your mistress has just been telling me how good you are to her."
Amelia's face softened.
"No one could help being good to a lady like her—she is a lady," and she flounced out of the room.
Nanty smiled. "You cannot be very dull so long as that young person is in the house." She pushed my couch nearer the fire, broke the top off my egg, and ordered me to begin to eat.