hat?"

"Because I like it," she replied, simply.

He was silenced. "That's a bit o' real Spode," he said, as she put it on
the table and dusted the several pieces with a corner of the tablecloth.

"It won't be in any danger," she retorted, "until it comes to be washed
up. So I'll stop afterwards and wash it up myself. There!"

"Now you can't find the teaspoons, miss!" he challenged her.

"I think I can," she said.

She raised the tablecloth at the end, discovered the knob of a drawer,
and opened it. And, surely, there were teaspoons.

"Can't I just take a peep into the scullery?" she begged, with a
bewitching supplication. "I won't stop. It's nearly time your servant
was back, if she's always so dreadfully prompt as you say. I won't touch
anything. Servants are so silly. They always think one wants to
interfere with them."

Without waiting for James's permission, she burst youthfully into the
scullery.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "there's some one here!"

Of course there was. There was Mrs. Butt.

Although the part played by Mrs. Butt in the drama was vehement and
momentous, it was nevertheless so brief that a description of Mrs. Butt
is hardly called for. Suffice it to say that she had so much waist as to
have no waist, and that she possessed both a beard and a moustache.
This curt catalogue of her charms is unfair to her; but Mrs. Butt was
ever the victim of unfairness.

James Ollerenshaw looked audaciously in at the door. "It's Mrs. Butt,"
said he. "Us thought as ye were out."

"Good-afternoon, Mrs. Butt," Helen began, with candid pleasantness.

A pause.

"Good-afternoon, miss."

"And what have you got for uncle's tea to-day? Something tasty?"

"I've got this," said Mrs. Butt, with candid unpleasantness. And she
pointed to an oblate spheroid, the colour of brick, but smoother, which
lay on a plate near the gas-stove. It was a kidney.

"H'm!"--from James.

"It's not cooked yet, I see," Helen observed. "And--"

The clock finished her remark.

"No, miss, it's not cooked," said Mrs. Butt. "To tell ye the honest
truth, miss, I've been learning, 'stead o' cooking this 'ere kidney."
She picked up the kidney in her pudding-like hand and gazed at it. "I'm
glad the brasses is clean, miss, at any rate, though the house _does_
look as though there was no woman about the place, and servants _are_
silly. I'm thankful to Heaven as the brasses is clean. Come into my
scullery, and welcome."

She ceased, still h