boiled meat. Bessie says that Mrs Butler did miss a bell-rope.

9

There was a rush and a banging up the passage. The kitchen door burst
violently open. A girl (though she wore long skirts her figure was
unformed and her waist had a stiff youthful curve) ran quickly into the
room.

Her eager bright-coloured young face--that also not yet fully
formed--was overshadowed by a flapping decorated hat obviously
constructed less for a woman's head--less still for a maiden's--than
for a cash draper's window. Her chest was plastered with a motley
collection of cheap jewellery and lace. Her boots had not been cleaned.

She dropped her cardboard boxes on the floor. Regardless of her womanly
attire, like nothing so much as a hasty child, she flung her arms round
Tony's neck.

"Hallo, Dad! How be 'ee? Eh? How's everybody? Lord, I'm hungry. Look
what I got for 'ee. An't forgot nobody this time, though 'tisn't
everybody as remembers me. Look, Dad!"

"What is it?" asked Tony, looking blankly, as if he could hardly
realise so much clatter.

"Lookse, Dad! What do 'ee think o'it?"

A box was torn open. From it came a couple of glass ornaments, and
various sorts of 'coloured rock' and sticky toffee for the children.

[Sidenote: _BACK FROM SERVICE_]

It was Tony's eldest daughter, Jenny, come home from service. She
walked round the room picking up things to examine, things to eat,
things that she claimed were hers, and things that she desired given
her. She talked without, so far as I could see, any connection between
the sentences. Mouthfuls of food reduced her babbling shriek to a
burr-burr.

"Be 'ee glad to see your daughter, Dad?"

"Iss...." said Tony, looking at her very fondly, but still puzzled.

"Don't believe yu be. Why didn't 'ee write then if yu loves me so?"

"Thic's Mam 'Idger's job."

"G'out!" said Mrs Widger,--"Jenny, you an't see'd our addition, have
'ee."

I held out my hand. Jenny blushed; then she said: "Good evening, sir";
then she giggled; and finally she turned her back on me. It took a
minute or two for her happy carelessness to return.

Domestic servants on holiday, more than any other class of people,
strain one's tact and rouse one's ingrained snobbery. They tend to be
over-respectful--the sort of respectfulness that presupposes
reward,--and to brandish _sirs_, or to be shy and silly, or else
to treat one with a more airy familiarity than the acquaintanceship
warrants. In the matter of mann