in her irises as she said:

"You mean that you'd put me wise? Oh, but I'd never learn!"

"On the contrary, I think madam would pick up very quick."

"And I'd never be able to talk the right----"

"I could learn madam to talk just as good as me."

It seemed too much. She clasped her hands. It was the nearest point
she had ever reached to ecstasy. "Oh, do you think you could? You talk
somethin' beautiful, you do!"

He smiled modestly. "I've always lived with the best people, and I
suppose I ketch their wyes. I know what a gentleman is--and a lydy. I
know all a lydy's little 'abits, and before two or three months was
over madam 'ud 'ave them as natural as natural, if she wouldn't think
me overbold."

"When 'ud you begin?"

The bright spot deepened in each cheek. "I've begun already, if madam
won't think me steppin' out o' my plyce to sye so, in showin' madam
the spoons and forks for the different----"

Letty colored, too. "Yes, I saw that. I take it as very kind. But--"
she looked at him with a puzzled knitting of the brows--"but what
makes you take all this trouble for me?"

"I've two reasons, madam, but I'll only tell you one of 'em just now.
The other'll keep. I'll myke it known to you if--if all goes as I
'ope." He straightened himself up. "I don't often speak o' this," he
continued, "because among us butlers and valets it wouldn't be
understood. Most of us is what's known as conservative, all for the
big families and the old wyes. Well, so am I--to a point. But----"

He moved a number of objects on the table before he could go on. "I
wasn't born to the plyce I 'old now," he explained after getting his
material at command. "I wasn't born to nothink. I was what they calls
in England a foundlin'--a byby what's found--what 'is parents 'ave
thrown awye. I don't know who my father and mother was, or what was my
real nyme. 'Enery Steptoe is just a nyme they give me at the
Horphanage. But I won't go into that. I'm just tryin' to tell madam
that my life was a 'ard one, quite a 'ard one, till I come to New York
as footman for Mr. Allerton's father, and afterward worked up to be
'is valet and butler."

He cleared his throat. Expressing ideals was not easy. "I 'ope madam
will forgive me if I sye that what it learned me was a fellow-feelin'
with my own sort--with the poor. I've often wished as I could go out
among the poor and ryse them up. I ain't a socialist--a little bit of
a anarchist perhaps, but nothink extre