“But, Muriel,” pleaded Lucy, in a low tone, “you ought not to make personal remarks of that sort! And your mamma herself will have to wear spectacles if she lives long enough.”
“Then I hope she won’t,” said Muriel. She was going to say something else, but interrupted herself to put out her tongue at Sybil at the other side of the table. Possibly Mrs. Brand herself noticed this performance, and as rebuke to such children at such a moment would have probably had still more compromising results, all she could do was to make the signal for the ladies’ retreat into the drawing-room.
Mrs. Jinxson evidently held the position of intimate in the Brand mansion. She and Florence promptly began to exchange confidences, while Lucy took up her rôle of the hostess’s sister by trying to interest the spectacled dame. That lady, however, preferred to strike into the other conversation.
“Do I hear you say you are changing your footman, Mrs. Jinxson?” she said.
“Yes,” said that lady, turning to her with animation. “I was just congratulating dear Mrs. Brand on only keeping a page. It is far better to secure, for occasions, such perfect attendance as we have had to-night than to have to endure one’s own man-servant, who is always either a clumsy raw hand or a finished villain—either quarrelling with one’s maids or making love to them. But Mr. Jinxson will have his own way; he has always been used to men-servants, and he will not hear reason.”
Mr. Jinxson’s father, a very respectable man, had kept a pleasant little hotel in a provincial town.
“We are parting with our present footman,” Mrs. Jinxson proceeded, “because he is so crude. Nothing will mellow him. When we have gentlemen’s dinner parties—as we so often do—and story-telling and jokes are going, his face is covered with a broad grin. Once I actually heard him giggle.” She turned to Lucy. “Such a thing is unendurable, is it not? It is the A B C of a servant’s training, man or woman, that not a muscle shall move whatever is said or done. What right have they to take an interest in anything but their work?”
Now this very difficulty had occurred in some of the houses where Lucy’s friend, Miss Latimer, had been governess. She and Lucy had discussed it together. Miss Latimer had told her that Dr. Thomas Guthrie, the great preacher, having heard such a complaint raised against a servant, had remarked that, for his part, if a servant were able to conceal all interest in family mirth or misery going on before his eyes, he should be inclined to wonder what else he had acquired equal skill in concealing. Lucy told this little story with a smile and without any comment.
The spectacled lady stared at her stonily. Mrs. Jinxson gave a polite sniff, and there was a little motion of Florence’s head which effectually suppressed her sister.
But at that moment the gentlemen came upstairs, and the conversation drifted into chit-chat about books which nobody seemed to have read, and pictures which nobody seemed to have seen. Then there was “a little music”—the elderly spectacled dame contributing “My mother bids me bind my hair,” and Mr. Jinxson following suit with “My love, she’s but a lassie yet.” Then somebody’s carriage was announced, and the little party broke up, Lucy naturally being the last to leave.