Come Out of the Kitchen! A Romance. Alice Duer Miller
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"Lily," replied the young woman, in a deep voice of annoyance.
"Lily," said Mrs. Falkener, as if this were a most unsuitable name for a housemaid, and she looked up at Crane to confirm her opinion, but he was again looking at the cook and did not notice her.
"Well, Lily," continued the elder lady, as if she made a distinct concession in making use of such a name at all in addressing a servant, "do you or do you not want to take this place? There is, I suppose, nothing to compel you to take it if you do not want. But now is the time to say so."
Lily, with a manner that did seem a little ungracious, replied that she did want it, and added, on receiving a quick glance from the butler, Smithfield, "Madame."
"Well, then," said Mrs. Falkener, becoming more condescending, "we shall expect a more pleasant demeanor from you, a spirit of coöperation. Nothing is more trying for yourself or your fellow servants—"
Reed moved forward and whispered in Mrs. Falkener's ear:
"It will straighten out of itself, my dear madame—nothing but a little embarrassment—a grande dame like yourself, you understand me, a tremendous impression on a young woman of this sort—"
Mrs. Falkener interrupted him.
"What is the name of the boy in the corner?" she asked.
At this, a round-faced lad of perhaps eighteen sprang forward. The most striking items of his costume were a red neckerchief and a green baize apron and leggings, giving to his appearance a slight flavor of a horse-boy in an illustration to Dickens.
"I, ma'am," he said, with a strong cockney accent, "am the Useful Boy, as they say in the States."
"He's very good at doing boots," said Reed.
"Boots," cried the boy, and kissing his hand he waved it in the air with a gesture we have been accustomed to think of as continental rather than British, "a boot, particularly a riding-boot, is to me—"
"What is your name?" Mrs. Falkener asked, and this time the severity of her manner was unmistakable.
It did not, however, dampen the enthusiasm of the last candidate.
"My name, ma'am," he replied, "is B-r-i-n-d-l-e-b-u-r-y."
"Brindlebury?"
"Pronounced, 'Brinber'—the old Sussex name with which, ma'am, I have no doubt you, as a student of history—"
Mrs. Falkener turned to Crane.
"I think you will have trouble with that boy," she said. "He is inclined to be impertinent."
Crane looked at the boy over her head, and the boy, out of a pair of twinkling gray eyes, looked back. They both managed to look away again before a smile had been actually exchanged, but Crane found himself making use for the third time of his favorite formula:
"Oh, I think I'll find him all right."
Mrs. Falkener, remembering the pitiable weakness of men, again waved her hand.
"They may go now," she said to Reed, who hastily shepherded the four back again into the back office. When they were alone, she turned to Crane and said with the utmost conviction:
"My dear Burton, none of those servants will do—except the butler, who appears to be a thoroughly competent person. But those young women—they may have been anything. Did you not observe that their nails had been manicured?"
Crane stammered slightly, for the fact had not escaped him, in connection, at least, with one of the young women.
"Don't—don't cooks ever manicure their nails?" he said. "It seems rather a good idea to me."
Reed, who was once more approaching, caught these last words.
"Ah," he said, "you were speaking of the manicuring of servants' nails—"
Mrs. Falkener gave him a severe look.
"I was advising Mr. Crane not to engage any one but the butler."
"Indeed, how very interesting," said Reed. "Your judgment in the matter is very valuable, madame, I know, but perhaps you do not sufficiently emphasize the difficulties of getting any servants at all in this part of the country. In fact, I could not undertake, if these are not engaged—"
"Well, I could," said the lady. "I could telegraph to New York to my own intelligence office and have three really competent people here by to-morrow evening."
For a moment Reed looked profoundly distressed, and then he went on:
"Exactly, I have no doubt, madame. But what I was about to say was that I could not undertake to rent the Revelly house to a staff of unknown Northern servants. You see, these two young women have been practically brought up in the household of Mrs. Crosslett-Billington—an old family friend of the Revellys—and they know they would take care of things in the way they are accustomed to—"
"Of course, of course, very natural," said Crane. "I quite agree. I'm willing to give these people a chance. Of course, Mrs. Falkener, I don't know as much about these things as you do, but it's only for a few weeks, and as for their nails—"
"Oh, I can explain that," cried Reed; "in fact, I should have done so at the start. It's an idiosyncrasy of Mr. Billington's. He insists that all the servants in the house should be manicured, particularly those who wait on table, or have anything to do with touching the food."
Mrs. Falkener compressed her lips till they were nothing but a seam in her face.
"Humph!" she said again, and without another word she turned and swept out of the office.
Left alone, the two men stood silent, without even looking at each other, and finally it was Crane who observed mildly:
"Well, you know, they are a little queer in some ways—"
"Take my word for it," said Reed, earnestly, "you will make no mistake in engaging them all—except that boy, but you can manage him, I have no doubt. As for the cook, you will be surprised. Her cooking is famous in three counties, I assure you."
An instant later, the lease was duly signed.
When the motor was safely on its way back to Washington, Mrs. Falkener gave her companions on the back seat the benefit of her own impression. One was her daughter, a muscular, dark-eyed girl, who imagined that she had thoroughly emancipated herself from her mother's dominance because she had established a different field of interest. She loved out-of-door sport of all kinds, particularly hunting, and was as keen and competent about them as her mother was about household management. The two respected each other's abilities, and managed to lead an affectionate life in common.
The man on the back seat was Solon Tucker—Crane's lawyer, by inheritance rather than by choice. He was a thin, erect man, with a narrow head and that expression of mouth at once hard and subtle that the Law writes on so many men's faces. His mind was excellently clear, his manner reserved, and his invariable presupposition that all human beings except himself were likely to make fools of themselves. He had, however, immense respect for Mrs. Falkener's opinions on any subject except law—on which he respected nobody's opinions but his own, least of all those of judges; and he believed that nothing would so effectively lighten his own responsibilities in regard to Crane as to marry him to Mrs. Falkener's daughter, an idea in which Mrs. Falkener cordially agreed.
"You must make a point of staying with him, Solon," she was now murmuring into that gentleman's rather large ear, "if, as I fear, he actually takes this house. You have never seen such an extraordinary group of servants—except the butler. Do you suppose it could be a plot, a blackmailing scheme of some sort? The cook—Well, my dear Solon, a pocket Venus, a stage ingénue, with manicured nails! He was determined to engage her from the first. It seems very unsafe to me. A bachelor of Burton's means. You must stay by him, Solon. In fact," she added, "I think we had better both stay by him. Poor boy, he has no idea of taking care of himself."
"He