"I should go into service," pursued the sylph; "like as not, you'll 'ave a charnce at some rich young man, that way, sooner or later. 'Ousemaids have done that, by good management, even owver in the Old Country. Out 'ere, it's a—a caution, 'ow often it happens".
"I don't want to marry anybody, rich or poor, just now", said Daisy; "but how do you get into 'service', and what is it? What do you have to do?"
"Oh, down't you know what service is?" her companion simulated surprise broadly; then, looking a little aside, as though addressing a third party, the sylph murmured: "Ow, the denseniss of the mahsses! It's a cortion, it is!"
After this soliloquy, she faced Daisy again, looking the girl up and down as through the mistress' lorgnette. "W'y", she said, "domestic service, I mean—service: I carn't use any other word—in some big 'ouse, with your two evenin's off a week, if you're a good bargainer, an' a charnce to have your comp'ny in the kitchin, when the Missis isn't abaout—she carn't always be on 'and, can she?"
Daisy was so attracted—not by the "company" aspect of the suggested vocation, as by the thought that she might not only view, but actually dwell in, some of the rich and romantic interiors she had seen in photoplays at Thompson's Hall in Toddburn, and perhaps have an adventure of her own in a "big 'ouse"—that she forgot to ask her companion the obvious question: why she herself was not 'in service'.
"I know a girl as is just leavin' her place," the sylph pursued; "I shall give you the address, if you wish, and phone her to be on the lookout, so you'll 'ave no trouble a-findin' the servants' entrance. 'Ave you a bit of pyper abaout you?"
Daisy fumbled in her telescope grip and brought out an old letter, from which she tore off the blank sheet. The sylph drew out of her coiffure a thin pencil that had been skewered there. In a leaning, long-lettered hand, she wrote a street name and number.
"There", she said, as she handed the scrap of paper to Daisy, "take a taxi—that's quickest, and it will save you arskin' your way. You'll do withaout references—the Missis in this place I'm sendin' you to is a bit of a soft un, and Annie will see to that paht of it. I say, I should nip out naow, if I were you," the sylph glanced at her wrist-watch, "while 'Ogle's away at the station with 'is bus. 'E just left as I came up. I shan't tell him where you've gone."
Daisy, her heart dancing with the spirit of adventure, went over to the looking-glass to do up her hair. After a glance into the mirror, she turned.
"I ought to have a clean blouse," she said; then in her spirit of blunt, brisk self-advantage, she added: "If you could lend me one, it would help, perhaps, to make sure I get the job."