Miss Vane did not wait to let them ask. “My dear,” she said, kissing Mrs. Sewell and giving her hand to the minister in one, “he is a pearl! And I've kept him from mixing his native lustre with Rising Sun Stove Polish by becoming his creditor in the price of a pair of overalls. I had no idea they were so cheap, and you can see that they will fade, with a few washings, to a perfect Millet blue. They were quite his own idea, when he found the furnace needed blacking, and he wanted to use the fifty cents he earned this morning toward the purchase, but I insisted upon advancing the entire dollar myself. Neatness, self-respect, awe-inspiring deference!—he is each and every one of them in person.”
Sewell could not forbear a glance of triumph at his wife.
“You leave us very little to ask,” said that injured woman.
“But I've left myself a great deal to tell, my dear,” retorted Miss Vane, “and I propose to keep the floor; though I don't really know where to begin.”
“I thought you had got past the necessity of beginning,” said Sewell. “We know that the new pearl sweeps clean,”—Miss Vane applauded his mixed metaphor—“and now you might go on from that point.”
“Well, you may think I'm rash,” said Miss Vane, “but I've thoroughly made up my mind to keep him.”
“Dear, dear Miss Vane!” cried the minister. “Mrs. Sewell thinks you're rash, but I don't. What do you mean by keeping him?”
“Keeping him as a fixture—a permanency—a continuosity.”
“Oh! A continuosity? I know what that is in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but I'm not sure that I follow your meaning exactly.”
“Why, it's simply this,” said Miss Vane. “I have long secretly wanted the protection of what Jane calls a man-body in the House, and when I saw how Lemuel had blacked the furnace, I knew I should feel as safe with him as with a whole body of troops.”