"Pardon, miss." At her name, the maid's stout form appeared from behind the angle of the veranda, where she had been conducting a discreet flirtation with the waterman, who with a bucket supported by a frame on wheels and drawn by eight frisky little huskies, supplied Perdu with water from the lake at five cents the pail. "Do not count on me, miss. When my month is up I am looking to settle down on my own account."
"You are going to desert me? You are planning to set up in business, Sarah?" asked Evelyn, dismayed.
"Business!" Sarah laughed, scornfully. "With men growing on the bushes, as one might say."
"You don't mean to say you are going to get married?"
"Why not me as well as the next lady, miss, and sooner than some, in a place where ladies is valued far more for their practical abilities than for mere youth and skin-deep beauty. I am told that two French-Canadian gentlemen, who are starting rival laundries, came to blows about me in the Pioneer Bakery last night; this gentleman with the waterworks concession has just passed some extremely gratifying remarks about me—though my own preference is for a Scotch gentleman with religious views and a copper proposition. Dear knows one needs something stable to tie up to in this outlandish place, where day and night get all mixed up!"
"But, Sarah," Evelyn laughed, "you know you haven't changed your watch hands since we left the Grand Central Station."
"Time is time, miss," stated Sarah, "and twisting the hands of a watch don't affect it. I've always heard that mining camps was immoral places, and I'll answer for it this monkeying-with-the-clock business was invented by some scapegrace that wanted to deceive his poor wife about the hour he got home at night. But my choice, whichever I decide on, won't take me in that way!" She shook her umbrella with a mixture of coquetry and warning in the direction of the waterman.
Again Evelyn laughed, rather helplessly. "And I have been so indulgent with you, allowing you to gratify your crude taste for colors, where any other mistress would have insisted on black, serge or alpaca, with at most for your bonnet a quill or wing. However, I mustn't stand in your light, Sarah."
"You can't, miss," the maid informed her, respectfully, but with finality. "As for deserting you, as a married lady I shall only be too happy to chaperon you till your father gets back or till you settle down on your own account. And to start with, though my month isn't up, let me give you a bit of advice as from one lady to another. Policemen," she eyed Scarlett with disparagement, "are all very well in their way, but as from my own experience I know they are apt to be triflers, particularly on promotion. Measured by a New York figure of speech among us below-stairs ladies, miss, I myself wouldn't think of permitting an arm with fewer than three stripes on it round my waist."
On this Scarlett assured Sarah, to her great indignation, that she, at any rate, would be safe from his advances, his arm not being long enough to meet her figure-of-speech's measurements. When she had returned to the waterman, Evelyn, recovering from the indignant embarrassment into which Sarah's advice had thrown her, sighed: "Such an admirable maid! However will my hair get dressed?"