l fluttered at her work, as she had done for the past
thirty years. The late Mrs. Allerton had liked her about the table
because she was swift, deft, and moved lightly. A thin little woman,
with a profile resembling that of Punch's Judy, and a smile of
cheerful piety, she yielded to time only by a process of drying up.

Nettie Duckett was quick in her own defense, but breathless, too, from
girlish laughter. "I can't 'elp syin' what I see, now can I? There she
was 'arf dressed in the little back spare-room. Oh, the commonest
thing! You wouldn't 'a wanted to sweep 'er out with a broom."

"Pretty goin's on I must sye," Jane commented. "'Ope the best of
everyone I will, but when you think that we was all on the top
floor----"

"Pretty goin's off there'll be, I can tell you that," Mrs. Courage
declared in her rich, decided bass. "Just let me 'ave a word with
Master Rashleigh. I'll tell 'im what 'is ma would 'ave said. She left
'im to me, she did. 'Courage,' she's told me many a time, 'that boy'll
be your boy after I'm gone.' As good as mykin' a will, I call it. And
now to think that with us right 'ere in the 'ouse.... Where's Steptoe?
Do 'e know anything about it?"

"Do 'e know anything about what?" The question came from Steptoe
himself, who appeared on the threshold.

The three women maintained a dramatic silence, while the old
butler-valet looked from one to another.

"Seems as if there was news," he observed dryly.

"Tell 'im, Nettie," Mrs. Courage commanded.

Nettie was the young thing of the establishment, Mrs. Courage's own
niece, brought from England when the housemaid's place fell vacant on
Bessie's unexpected marriage to Walter Wildgoose, Miss Walbrook's
indoor man. Indeed she had been brought from England before Bessie's
marriage, of which Mrs. Courage had had advance information, so that
as soon as Bessie left, Nettie was on the spot to be smuggled into the
Allerton household. Steptoe had not forgiven this underhand movement
on Mrs. Courage's part, seeing that in the long-ago both she and Jane
had been his own nominees, and that he considered the household posts
as gifts at his disposal. "I'll 'ave to make a clean sweep o' the lot
o' them," he had more than once declared at those gatherings at which
the English butlers and valets of upper Fifth Avenue discuss their
complex of interests. Forty years in the Allerton family had made him
not merely its major-domo but in certain respects its head. His tone
t