Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/309

 whether important or trivial, appears, in a lady, as a matter of course. I looked at her again, and it struck me that, in the house, she should wear a cap and apron. But her dress remained unchanged since the afternoon.

"You are not going out now?" I said, "so late? And it is still raining. Listen, you can hear it on the skylight."

She listened obediently. The rain, blown by a gusty wind, pattered upon the big skylight in the roof. Martha glanced at me from behind her spectacles.

"Yes, m'm, but the mistress told me to post this letter. After that I may go to bed."

She held a fat, square envelope in her ungloved fingers, and I knew, without looking at it, that it contained the usual daily letter from Amy Norris to her lover. I moved impatiently. Why could not the girl have written earlier in the afternoon?—this going out to catch the late post was an old grievance with the servants, and now I supposed both of them would thrust the distasteful duty upon Martha.

"But do you know the way?" I asked.

"Yes, thank you, m'm," she answered, and slipped down the stairs away from me.

Before I went to bed that night I ventured on a sketchy remonstrance with Amy Norris upon this subject of the late post.

"The girl is young, and evidently country-bred," I concluded. "Don't you think it's a pity to send her out so late into the streets? Could we not all get our letters ready for the last post before dinner?"

Amy looked at me in amazement. She was good-hearted enough, but perfectly stolid and unapproachable when such small matters as this were in question, and consideration for servants was quite beyond her comprehension. “The