Page:Jepson--Pollyooly.djvu/96

 to let her retain the post of housekeeper, the duties of which she had discharged with so thorough an efficiency, on the ground that she had deceived him, had not only ruffled her sensibilities but also given her a very poor opinion of Mr. Gedge-Tomkins' intelligence. The alternative to herself he had chosen, was to any intelligent eye utterly unworthy to be the housekeeper of even a tramp.

Accordingly she had regarded Mr. Gedge-Tomkins as merely a taciturn, earnest, hard-working barrister, wholly unworthy any genuine admiration or esteem, not at all the kind of man to whom one could attach oneself. His sudden, terrific explosion in the part of a man of violence raised him immeasurably in her estimation. For the first time he took her girlish fancy; and she grilled his bacon with some of the loving care she was used to devote to that of the Honorable John Ruffin.

Mr. Gedge-Tomkins ate that bacon more slowly and thoughtfully than usual. At the end of it, when she brought him his eggs, he said with a judicial air and in a judicial tone:

"I think that in er—er—more favorable