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Chivers wondered aloud. “What does he want, poor dear, to think about?” But a high, clear voice cut off his speculation. From the stairs descended a wonderful lady—tall, radiant, laughing, rustling—calling out: “Housekeeper, Butler, old Family Servant!” She fairly waked the sleeping echoes, and Chivers gazed up at her, half dismayed, half dazzled, with the sense of a duty neglected. “Oh, I should have told him of her!”
III
She was an apparition, a presence requiring announcement and explanation, evidently wishing to forestall all social preliminaries. Young, tall, radiant, lovely, dressed in a manner determined by both the fact and humour of her journey, she was a brush of Paris given free play. “Did you think I had got snapped down in an old box like that poor girl—what’s her name?—the one who was poking round in the celebrated poem? You dear, delightful man, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you, mum?”
“That you’re so perfectly—perfect! You’re ever so much better than anyone has ever said. You’re everything in the world you ought to be, and not the shade of a shade of anything you oughtn’t!”
Chivers gaped. “Well, mum, I try!”
“Oh, no, you don’t—that’s just your charm! I try, but you do nothing: here you simply are—you can’t help it!”
He fairly fell back. “Me, mum?”
She took him in at the eyes. “Yes, you too, you positive old picture! I’ve seen the old masters—but you’re the old master! ‘The good and faithful servant’—Rembrandt van Rhyn: with three stars. That’s what you are!”
“I find it a bit of a strain, mum,” Chivers candidly replied, “fairly to call it—to keep up with what you do say.”
“That’s just what everyone finds it!” She laughed, in constant movement, observing, comparing, taking notes. “You’re so fatally right and so deadly complete that I can scarcely bear it. What do you call it—a royal salute, a hundred guns?”
“I saw as soon as you arrived, mum, that you were looking for more things than ever I heard tell of!”
“Oh, I had got you by heart, from books and drawings and photos; I had you in my pocket when I came. It’s all here, every inch of it, and now at last I can do what I want!”
“And pray, mum, what might that be?”
“Why, take you right back with me—to Missoura Top.”
“Do I understand you, mum, that you require to take me?”
She embraced him. “Do you mean to say you’d come—as the old Family Servant? Then do, you nice real thing: it’s just what I’m dying for—an old Family Servant! I want a first-rate second-hand one, all ready made. You’re the best I’ve seen yet, and I wish I could have you packed—put up in paper and bran—as I shall have my old pot there.” She whisked about. “Don’t let me forget my precious pot!” She appealed to Chivers, who shuffled sympathetically to the table where the object had been placed. “Don’t you just love old crockery? That’s awfully sweet old Chelsea.”
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