Daisy Herself. Will E. Ingersoll
post-cards, handkerchief-holders, tidies on the chair-backs, a window-box with flowers, gave a jointly fresh and cosy effect to the room. To Daisy, after her loft at home, it seemed palatial.
"Who has the other bed?" said Daisy.
"Jean, o' course," said the disgruntled Alice, "'oo did you suppowse 'ad it?" She slumped down on the end of the bed opposite to where Daisy sat.
"I should 'a been aout o' here a week gorn," she harped. "I gave the Missis 'er notice, an' thought everything was owverwith. Then the Boss, 'e up an' says if I gow without there's a gel 'andy to take my place, I down't get no wagis. So I've stuck it aout. It's been a job, I can tell you."
"Is that so," absently commented Daisy, who had been looking around her with considerable interest, "well, well."
"It ain't the place I mind," said Alice, cautiously, as the thought crossed her mind that Daisy was not yet formally engaged and might "back out", "but Jawge, my young man, 'e gets 'is meals at the Manor 'Aouse, an' 'e wants me where 'e can see me 'andy. But, come on, down't dordle so. Chuck your luggage under the bed or anyw'ere you please, whilst we go to see the Missis … Ar—'alf a minit. Yeou do look a bit of a drab in that waist. Put on this one of mine till arfter we've seen the Missis. Mind and don't smudge it, faw you must give it back to me straightaway, as soon as she says she'll take you on. I shouldn't lend it you, only I want to make sure you're engaged, so I can be hoff to the Manor to my Jawge."
Daisy put on the flimsy but clean lawn blouse. It was fashioned loose and low in the neck, or she would never have made it meet; for Daisy was superbly "full" where Alice was flat.
"Yeou deou look a bit staout." Stout was not the word; but Alice was voicing envy, not admiration. "Come, now—we sharn't have any bother. She'll tieke you, straight off—I know she will."
Sir Thomas Harrison's wife was in the dining-room, setting the table for tea, as she always did on evenings when there were no guests expected. Daisy, after a little catch of her breath at the size and appointments of this room, turned her eyes upon her new mistress and felt an immediate curious warming of the heart—curious, because Daisy usually faced strangers with an eye that danced with aggressiveness even while the cheek below it dimpled ingratiatingly: with speech that was chary, and with a capering confidence in her ability to "handle" any eventuality. Lady Harrison—without knowing it, however—disarmed Daisy Nixon at once with her mild brown eyes, her stooped housewifely shoulders, her mothering smile. Daisy felt that, some day soon, if she got and kept this situation, she would find herself talking to this woman more freely than she had ever talked to anyone in all her shrewd, guarded, combative sixteen and a half years.
Lady Harrison was diffident equally with anyone, servant-girl or marchioness. Her people, plain-spoken folk, had early hammered it home to her that she was all knuckles and thumbs. In these latter days, it was a pleasant habit of Sir Tom, in those moments when his self-complacency sat upon him most inspiringly, to stick his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, puff regardlessly into his wife's face the smoke from a plethoric cigar, and remind her of her good-fortune in "getting" him—a feat she, who had been awkward Martha Andrews, had performed quite passively, after Sir Thomas (then young Tom Harrison, paying for "private board" at the Andrews home) had tasted her apple pie and slept in a bedroom she had "fixed up" for his accommodation. Probably if she had been less shy, she would not have been so good a home-maker. She would then have gone out with "the boys", as the other Andrews girls did, and left the pies and bedrooms to mother's attention.
"This is the new gel, ma'am," said Alice.
"Oh," said Lady Harrison, leaning her knuckles on the edge of the table and raising a wandering hand to the brooch at her throat, "that's very nice." This, the only social expression that had "stuck" in Lady Harrison's memory, was her sole verbal resource when locked in the besetting shyness that rose up and gripped her when she first faced a stranger.
"She'll start at once, ma'am," said Alice, not trying very arduously to conceal her impatience to be gone.
"Oh," said Lady Harrison again, fingering the brooch, "that's—very nice—very nice indeed."
"Well", said Alice, turning the doorknob as a preliminary to her exit, "I'll leave 'er along o' you, shall I, ma'am, an' go see to my packin'."
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