He was in a very teasing mood.
But his words failed this time in their effect.
“My dear Master Michael,” said the housekeeper, with a smile, “you are talking for talking’s sake, just to get a ‘rise out of me,’ as you used to say. Of course I know it is all right, and I can assure poor Miss Raynsworth that the matter will be perfectly safe in your hands.”
Mr Gresham did not reply. He had transferred his teasing to Solomon, from whom he at last succeeded in extracting a growl, which made Mrs Shepton start. Though if the truth were told, the dachs only growled out of amiable condescension, understanding that his doing so would gratify his master, whose childishness really amused him sometimes.
“All the same,” continued the old woman, when Solomon had subsided again, “I shall be more thankful than I can tell you, when the two ladies are safely off. It makes me that nervous, sir, you’d scarcely believe it. And unless I can persuade Miss Raynsworth to stay in her room with a bad headache this evening, there’s sure to be gossip in the hall; any one with half an eye could see she is quite upset; her poor eyes alone—”
Michael looked up quickly, and this time his old friend had no need to rebuke him for levity.
“Do you mean—” he began. “Are the—all of the servants not—not respectful and civil to her?”
Mrs Shepton bristled slightly.
“Civil, sir; of course they are that, at any rate when I am by, and I don’t think she ever comes much across them at other times. But ‘respectful’—if you mean behaving to her as if she were not one of themselves!—is the very last thing to wish for under the circumstances.”
“Of course, of course—I was forgetting,” said the young man.