xcessively delighted. She liked pretty things, and elegant
little comforts as well as any body, did Lettice, though they seldom
fell to her share, because she was always for giving them up to other
people.

"Do you like it, my dear?" said Mrs. Melwyn, in what Lettice thought the
sweetest, softest voice she had ever heard. "I have taken great pleasure
in getting it ready for you; I shall be glad, indeed, if you can make
yourself happy in it."

"Happy! Who could help being happy in such a paradise?" "And with such a
sweet, gentle, charming person as Mrs. Melwyn," mentally added Lettice.
"What matters it how cross the poor old general is," thought she.

"But, my dear, I don't see your trunks. Will you ring the bell for them?
The general must not be kept waiting for his dinner, and he can not
endure those who sit down at his table, either to be too late, or not to
be in an evening dress. Military men, you know, are so used to this sort
of precision, that they expect it from all around them. You will
remember another day, my dear, and--" then the under housemaid opened
the door. "Tell them to bring up Miss Arnold's trunks directly."

_Them._

She did not at that moment exactly know which was the proper servant
whose office it ought to be to carry Miss Arnold's trunks. Miss Arnold
was an anomaly. There was no precedent. Not a servant in this family
would stir without a precedent. The trunk was probably too heavy for the
under-housemaid to carry up--that under-housemaid, one of the fags of an
establishment like this, kept merely to do what the upper-servants are
too fine to do. In households like the one before us, you must have two
in every department--there is a chance, then, if you want any thing
done, you may get it done. The under-servant is always, as I said, a
sort of fag or slave in the eyes of the upper ones. They will _allow_
her to make herself useful, though it should not be exactly _her place_.
Mrs. Melwyn had provided for the attendance upon Miss Arnold by having
recourse to this said under-housemaid, and adding a couple of sovereigns
to her wages unknown to Randall, but she had forgotten the carrying up
of her trunk. Had it been Catherine, this would have been done as a
matter of course by the two footmen, and she had a sort of faint hope
they would do it of course now. But, she did not like to ask such a
thing, so she said "_them_;" hoping somebody would answer to it some way
or other, but--

"Who?" aske