"Perhaps the simpler thing would be to do without the butler."
"I am curious," she said, smiling--"very curious. Sir Wilfrid, for instance, talks of going down to stay with you?"
"Why not? He'd come off extremely well. There's an ex-butler, and an ex-cook of Chudleigh's settled in the village. When I have a visitor, they come in and take possession. We live like fighting-cocks."
"So nobody knows that, in general, you live like a workman?"
Delafield looked impatient.
"Somebody seems to have been cramming Evelyn with ridiculous tales, and she's been spreading them. I must have it out with her."
"I expect there is a good deal in them," said Julie. Then, unexpectedly, she raised her eyes and gave him a long and rather strange look. "Why do you dislike having servants and being waited upon so much, I wonder? Is it--you won't be angry?--that you have such a strong will, and you do these things to tame it?"
Delafield made a sudden movement, and Julie had no sooner spoken the words than she regretted them.
"So you think I should have made a jolly tyrannical slave-owner?" said Delafield, after a moment's pause.
Julie bent towards him with a charming look of appeal--almost of penitence. "On the contrary, I think you would have been as good to your slaves as you are to your friends."