w missus, Mr. Rashleigh, will 'ave to get some one else who
will."

"Mr. Rashleigh will 'ave to do that very selfsame thing. Not another
night will none of us sleep hunder this paternal roof with them that
their very presence is a houtrage. 'Enery Steptoe was always a
time-server, and a time-server 'e will be, but as for us women, we
shall see the new missus in goin' in to give 'er notice. Not a month's
notice, it won't be. This range as I've cooked at for nearly thirty
years I shall cook at no more, not so much as for lunch. Oh, dear! Oh,
dear! What's the world comin' to?"

In spite of her strength of character Mrs. Courage threw her apron
over her head and burst into tears. Jane was weeping already.

"There, there, aunt," Nettie begged, patting her relative between the
shoulders. "What's the good o' goin' on like that just because a silly
ass 'as married beneath 'im?"

Mrs. Courage pulled her apron from her face to cry out with passion:

"If 'e was goin' to disgryce 'imself like that, why couldn't 'e 'a
taken you?"

So Steptoe waited on Letty himself, bringing in the grapefruit, the
coffee, the egg, and the toast, and seeing that she knew how to deal
with each in the proper forms. He was so brooding, so yearning, so
tactful, as he bent over her, that she was never at a loss as to the
fork or spoon she ought to use, or the minute at which to use it.
Under his protection Letty ate. She ate, first because she was young
and hungry, and then because she felt him standing between her and all
vague terrors. By the time she had finished, he moved in front of her,
where he could speak as one human being to another.

Taking an empty plate from the table to put it on the sideboard, he
said: "I 'ope madam is chyngin' 'er mind about leavin' us."

Letty glanced up shyly in spite of being somewhat reassured. "What'ud
be the good of my changin' my mind when--when I'm not fit to stay?"

"Madam means not fit in the sense that----"

"I'm not a lady."

Resting one hand on the table, he looked down into her eyes with an
expression such as Letty had never before seen in a human face.

"I could myke a lydy of madam."

At the sound of these quiet words, so confidently spoken, something
passed through Letty's frame to be described only by the hard-worked
word, a thrill. It was a double current of vibration, partly of
upleaping hope, partly of the desperate sense of her own limitations.
A hundred points of gold dust were aflame