“Oh, Jane Smith? Well, Jane Smith is very fair—as servants go nowadays. I think she has been with me two years. She gave me notice herself. I forget why, really—some trifle it was. I thought it may be as well—for when they stay too long in one place they get careless.”
“I don’t think two years is very long, and they ought to grow more valuable the longer they stay,” said Mrs. Challoner.
“Oh, yes, of course they should, but they don’t. Two years is a very reasonable time as things are nowadays.”
“And you found her perfectly honest and truthful and reliable?” asked Lucy, who somehow felt shy in making these inquiries. It seemed to her queer that the mere fact that our servants require to earn their bread in our houses, should entitle one to ask searching questions about them such as we never ask before admitting acquaintances to our society!
“Honest? Yes, I have no reason to think her otherwise. I never missed anything, and any outlays she made always seemed correct. Truthful? Well, I never ask my servants questions, I make a point of that. I form my own conclusions about anything that happens. Reliable? Reliable?”—the lady echoed those words with significant notes of interrogation and exclamation—“I scarcely know how far you mean that word to go. I found no fault with her. I never care to get acquainted with my servants. If they do their work and give me no cause for displeasure that is enough for me.”
There was an awkward pause.
“Do you know anything about Jane Smith’s own people?” asked Lucy.
The lady shook her head.
“No,” she replied. “I have never found it necessary to make any inquiries. I allow no visitors. I give my servants one half-day off every week, but I don’t give it always on a regular day. I think that is a good plan. They get out on Sunday evening, when I expect them to go to the pew which I occupy in the morning. I think that is giving them every opportunity to be steady and respectable if they desire to be so.” The mistress herself prepared to show Mrs. Challoner to the door. She checked herself, however, to ask if her visitor would like to see Jane then or to have a call from her that evening, and Lucy accepted the latter alternative.
Three hours later Jane Smith came up to Mrs. Challoner’s house to hear the result of the inquiries about her. Lucy resolved to have a little conversation with the girl, to see if she could discover any bit of genuine human nature beneath the professional automaton which was all that her last mistress had required. Indeed she felt she must learn something more about the girl than that mistress had ever known.