Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/216

Rh said. "You get plenty of the sort of art you like. Leave us our few Mariannas."

"I don't quite see how it is going to turn out, though," remarked Phœbe thoughtfully. "Of course it is a great honour to have a genius for a general servant, and to have 'discovered' her ought to be frightfully exciting and all that. And I don't mind losing her much, because scrubbing floors is the only work that she can do really well; and who wants to have the floors scrubbed in someone else's house? But—well, you know what she is like. How will she go about it?"

"Oh, for that matter, wasn't Millie Myers fiddling at pit-doors a few years ago, and Ben Corvelli singing as he blacked the boots at a Bournemouth hotel?" interposed Mr. Bartlett.

"But I don't believe that Marianna has a scrap of ambition for anything," declared her mistress. "If you start with the idea of unbounded enthusiasm and heroic purpose on her part you are probably laying up for yourself quite a store of shocks and surprises. Mark my words and remember your poor heart, Flip."

Philip looked at his sister with deep but half-amused interest.

"I am wondering how you will rise to the occasion, She-bee,” he said presently. "You have a fascinating experiment before you. Here is a ragattee little creature with probably the heart of a coster, a mind like a new slate, and inspired fingers. You have the chance of a lifetime—a lifetime! of ten thousand lifetimes, I should say. It's quite the sort of thing you read about."

"I am quite content to let it remain the sort of thing I read about, as far as I am concerned," retorted Mrs. Bartlett. "What have I to do with it?"

"You? You have everything to do with it. You, and you alone, can become Marianna's kind patroness. You