He could not disguise his anxiety for her success. Was she
equal to the role? She was. Of course she was. He had never doubted that
she would be (he said to himself). His pride increased, scarcely escaped
being fatuous.

"I must congratulate you on the new front doormat, Mrs. Haim," said Mr.
Prince, with notable conversational tact. "I felt it at once in the
dark."

Mrs. Haim smiled.

"I do like a good doormat," she said. "It saves so much work, I always
think. I told Mr. Haim I thought we needed a new one, and bless me if he
didn't take me straight out to buy one."

The new doormat expressed Mrs. Haim's sole and characteristic criticism
of the organism into which she had so unassumingly entered. Secure in
the adoration of Mr. Haim, she might safely have turned the place
upside-down and proved to the Grove that she could act the mistress with
the best of them; but she changed nothing except the doormat. The
kitchen and scullery had already been hers before the eye of Mr. Haim
had fallen upon her; she was accustomed to them and had largely
fashioned their arrangements. Her own furniture, such of it as was
retained, had been put into the spare bedroom and the kitchen, and was
hardly noticeable there. The dramatic thing for her to do would have
been to engage another charwoman. But Mrs. Haim was not dramatic; she
was accommodating. She fitted herself in. The answer to people who asked
what Mr. Haim could see in her, was that what Mr. Haim first saw was her
mere way of existing, and that in the same way she loved. At her
tea-table, as elsewhere, she exhibited no special quality; she said
little; she certainly did not shine. Nevertheless the three men were
quite happy and at ease, because her way of existing soothed and
reinspired them. George especially got gay; and he narrated the
automobile adventure of the afternoon with amusing gusto. He was thereby
a sort of hero, and he liked that. He was bound by his position in the
world and by his clothes and his style to pretend to some extent that
the adventure was much less extraordinary to him than it seemed to them.
The others made no pretence. They were open-mouthed. Their attitude
admitted frankly that above them was a world to which they could not
climb, that they were not familiar with it and knew nothing about it.
They admired George; they put it to his credit that he was acquainted
with these lofty matters and moved carelessly and freely among them; and
George too s