and he must have been a great trial to
Mrs. Oliver until she got used to him and his pottering about all
over the house in his soft-soled shoes; and the mess he made of his
pocket-handkerchieves and his linen!

Mrs. Oliver was a round little fat bunch of a woman, if I may say so
in speaking of master's own aunt by marriage, and him a baronet. She
had the most lovely jewellery, and was very fond of wearing it of an
evening, more than most people do when they are staying with
relations and there's no company. She never spoke much except to
say, 'Yes, Dick dear,' and 'No, Dick dear,' when they spoke to each
other; but they were as fond of each other as pigeons on a roof, and
always very pleasant-spoken and nice to wait on.

As for James, he was the jolliest man I ever met, and cook said the
same. He was like Sam Weller in the book, or would have been if he
had lived in those far-off times; but footmen are more genteel now
than they were then.

Anyway, he hadn't been at the Court twenty-four hours before he was
first favourite with every one, and cook made him a Welsh rabbit
with her own hands, 'cause he hadn't been able to get his dinner
comfortable with the rest of us--a thing she wouldn't have done for
Sir William himself at that time of night. As for me, the first time
he looked at me with his jolly blue eyes--it was when he met me
carrying a tray the first morning after he came--my heart gave a
jump inside my print gown, and I said to it as I went downstairs--

'You've met your master, I'm thinking'; and if I did go to church
with him the very first Sunday, which was more than ever I had done
with any of the others, it was after he had asked me plain and
straight to go to church with him some day for good and all.

Now, the next morning, quite early, I was dusting the library, when
John come in with his black face like a thundercloud.

'Look here, Mary,' he says; 'what do you mean by going to church
with that stuck-up London trumpery?'

'Mind your own business,' says I, sharp as you please.

'I am,' he says. 'You are my business--the only business I care a
damn about, or am ever likely to. You don't know how I love you,
Mary,' he says. And I was sorry for him as he spoke. 'I would lie
down in the dirt for you to walk on if it would do you any good, so
long as you didn't walk over me to get to some other chap.'

'I am very sorry for you, John,' says I, 'but I've told you, not
once or twice, but fifty times,