‘I tell you what you are like,’ said Clive to her once:  ’you are like a fine racehorse, always on the quiver.’

Yet many people considered her cold and impassive.  Her walk and bearing showed a sensitive independence, and when she spoke it was usually in tones of command.  The girls in the shop, where she was a power second only to Ezra Brunt, were a little afraid of her, chiefly because she poured terrible scorn on their small affectations, jealousies, and vendettas.  But they liked her because, in their own phrase, ’there was no nonsense about’ this redoubtable woman.  She hated shams and make-believes with a bitter and ruthless hatred.  She was the heiress to at least five thousand a year, and knew it well, but she never encouraged her father to complicate their simple mode of life with the pomps of wealth.  They lived in a house with a large garden at Pireford, which is on the summit of the steep ridge between the Five Towns and Oldcastle, and they kept two servants and a coachman, who was also gardener.  Eva paid the servants good wages, and took care to get good value therefor.

‘It’s not often I have any bother with my servants,’ she would say, ’for they know that if there is any trouble I would just as soon clear them out and put on an apron and do the work myself.’

She was an accomplished house-mistress, and could bake her own bread:  in towns not one woman in a thousand can bake.  With the coachman she had little to do, for she could not rid herself of a sentimental objection to the carriage—­it savoured of ‘airs’; when she used it she used it as she might use a tramcar.  It was her custom, every day except Saturday, to walk to the shop about eleven o’clock, after her house had been set in order.  She had been thoroughly trained in the business, and had spent a year at a first-rate shop in High Street, Kensington.  Millinery was her speciality, and she still watched over that department with a particular attention; but for some time past she had risen beyond the limitations of departments, and assisted her father in the general management of the vast concern.  In commercial aptitude she resembled the typical Frenchwoman.

Although he was her father, Ezra Brunt had the wit to recognise her talents, and he always listened to her suggestions, which, however, sometimes startled him.  One of them was that he should import into the Five Towns a modiste from Paris, offering a salary of two hundred a year.  The old provincial stood aghast.  He had the idea that all Parisian women were stage-dancers.  And to pay four pounds a week to a female!

Nevertheless, Mademoiselle Bertot—­styled in the shop ’Madame’—­now presides over Ezra Brunt’s dressmakers, draws her four pounds a week (of which she saves two), and by mere nationality has given a unique distinction and success to her branch of the business.