Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/150

142 "At all events the surveyor knows it," said Mrs. Saltren, with some spirit, "perhaps better than does the owner."

"I admit that you have me there," laughed her brother.

"And," said Mrs. Saltren, "it is pounds on pounds I might have earned by sending information about high life to the society papers; but I was above doing that sort of thing; besides, the society papers were not published at that time. Sometimes there were as many as a dozen or fourteen lady's-maids and as many valets staying in the house with their masters and mistresses, and they were full of the most interesting information and bursting to reveal it, like moist sugar in a paper-bag."

"I'll tell you what it is," said Welsh, "servantdom is becoming a power in the country, just as the press has become. There is no knowing nowadays where to look for the seat of power; it is at the other extremity from the head. In old times the serfs and slaves were not of account at all, and now their direct representatives hold the characters and happiness of the best in the land in their hands. The country may have at one time been directed by its head; it is not so now, like a fish, it is directed and propelled by its tail. The servant class at one time was despised, now it is feared; it mounts on its two wings, the divorce court and the society press. What opportunities it now has of paying off old grudges, of pushing itself into notoriety, of earning a little money. This is the age of the utilisation of refuse. We find an employment for what our forefathers, nay, our fathers, cast aside. The rummage of copper mines is now burnt for arsenic, the scum of coal-tar makes aniline dyes, and I hear they are talking of the conversion of dirty rags by means of vitriol into lump sugar. It is so in social and political life—we are using up our refuse, we invest it with preponderating political influence, we chuck it into the House of Commons, and right it should be so; give every