Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/185

186 tact, though all her own, still was tact. She knew to a hair what you might and might not say to your mistress.

Gladys approved highly of Mr. Dix.

"He's a goer. You've got a fair treasure in him, Miss Lucy," she said, as she was taking over the shop—for now she served there every afternoon, the two girls taking charge in the mornings. Mr. Dix had just brought in a sheaf of white iris and Canterbury bell and scarlet geum, and also a list of trivialities—bast, labels, wire, quassia, soft-soap—to be ordered at the Stores.

"His feet don't stick to the ground like that Mrs. Veale's. Veale by name and Veale by nature. And beautiful manners. Took off his hat to me in the street, he did really; and always gets up when I come along when he's sitting down, as respectful as though I was a duchess. Ah, that 'ud be the gentleman for me, if I was a lady."

"No doubt some lady will think so in good time," said Lucilla.

"Let's hope she won't think so too late," said Gladys darkly. "A gentleman like that is just the one to get snapped up by some designing hussy: one of them vampire women you see on the films, or a woman with five other husbands like that Mrs. Doria de Vere, as she calls herself, in the paper last Sunday."

It was Gladys who secured the two maids, experienced, expensive, and so competent that they seemed scarcely human. She sniffed at Labour Exchanges, bought the Morning Post on the advice of Mr. Dix, and made a journey to a registry office in Baker Street.

"There's plenty of servants if you know how to intrap them," she explained. "I did it telling them what nice young innocents you two was, not knowing a thing about housekeeping, so they'd have it all their own way. But a cook I couldn't get. I see plenty, but they wants their weight in gold afore they'll come, and a tidy weight it 'ud be with some of 'em. Why not advertise for cook-housekeeper; suit