"Poor Chat." "Poor Chat doesn't know!" "Poor Chat's not
wise!" Also she did keep talking about her name and the respectability
of her descent. In fact she was a woman of a number of silly
affectations and one or two exasperating foibles, and Cartmell never
varied from his impromptu judgment--expressed before he had seen
her--that she was a fool. It is my deliberate opinion that she wished to
be thought more of a fool than she was--partly from an idea that little
sillinesses and affectations were genteel, partly with the notion that
they were disarming. She seemed always bent on showing you that she was
not the sort of person from whom any opposition need be feared, nor any
undue exercise of influence apprehended. It could only be supposed that
she had found this line of conduct useful in her relations toward her
employers; by contrast it flattered both their superior brains and their
superior positions. I allow for her natural taste, for her standards of
gentility. But she was a snob, too, "Poor Chat," and a time-server.

No harder words than those need be used about her--and they are too hard
perhaps; for there is one thing to be said on the other side--and it is
a thing of weight. Chat was fifty; as a governess she was hopelessly out
of date; I do not suppose that she saw her daily bread secure for three
months ahead. For a hundred pounds a year certain--secure from the
caprice of employers or of fate--she would probably have done or been
anything--even, so far as she could, honest.

But honesty alone, as she may well have reflected, does not breed
security of tenure in subordinate positions. I am far from saying that
it ought; on the whole I consider it to be a commoner, and therefore a
cheaper and more easily obtainable--and replaceable--commodity than
either a good brain or an agreeable demeanor. At any rate how easily it
may come near to costing a man his place I was very soon to discover by
my own experience. Well, perhaps, to honesty I ought to add a lack of
diplomacy and a temper naturally hot. But I am not sure: I cannot see
how any man could have done anything very different--given that he was
barely honest.

"There's a person in the drawing-room with the ladies, sir," said Loft
one day when I came up to tea at four o'clock.

Loft's social terminology was exact. When he said a "person" he did not
mean a "gentleman"--who was a gentleman--nor a "man"--who was a member
of the definitely lower orders of the c