t you ain't got no class spunk, and
that's why, in sperrit, you'll never be nothink but menials."

This lack of _esprit de corps_ was something he couldn't understand,
but what he understood less was the need of the heart to touch
occasionally the high points of experience. Mrs. Courage and Jane, to
say nothing of Nettie, after thirty years of domestic routine had
reached the place where something in the way of drama had become
imperative. The range and the pantry produce inhibitions as surely as
the desk or the drawing-room. On both natures inhibitions had been
packed like feathers on a seabird, till the soul cried out to be
released from some of them. It might mean going out from the home that
had sheltered them for years, and breaking with all their traditions,
but now that the chance was there, neither could refuse it. To a
virtuous woman, starched and stiffened in her virtue, steeped in it,
dyed in it, permeated by it through and through, nothing so stirs the
dramatic, so quickens the imagination, so calls the spirit to the
purple emotional heights, as contact with the sister she knows to be a
hussy. For Jane Cakebread and Mary Ann Courage the opportunity was
unique.

"Then I'll go. I'll go straight now."

As Steptoe brought the information that the three women of the
household were coming to announce the resignation of their posts,
Letty sprang to her feet.

"May I arsk madam to sit down again and let me explyne?"

Taking this as an order, she sank back into her chair again. He stood
confronting her as before, one hand resting lightly on the table.

"Nothink so good won't 'ave 'appened in this 'ouse since old Mrs.
Allerton went to work and died."

Letty's eyes shone with their tiny fires, not in pleasure but in
wonder.

"When old servants is good, they're good, but even when they're good,
there's times when you can't 'elp wishin' as 'ow the Lord 'ud be
pleased to tyke them to 'Imself."

He allowed this to sink in before going further.

"The men's all right, for the most part. Indoor work comes natural to
'em, and they'll swing it without no complynts. But with the women
it's kick, kick, kick, and when they're worn theirselves out with
kickin', they'll begin to kick again. What's plye for a man, for them
ain't nothink but slyvery."

Letty listened as one receiving revelations from another world.

"I ain't what they call a woman-'ater. _I_ believe as God made woman
for a purpose. Only I can't bring m