“Butter fingers!”

“I’m so sorry,” said Nora in a colorless tone.  She was raging inwardly at having allowed that beast of a man to put her in such a temper.  Why couldn’t she control herself?  How undignified to bandy words with a person she so despised.  It was hardly the moment for Gertie to take her to task for carelessness.  But Gertie was not the person to consider other moods than her own.

“You clumsy thing!  You’re always doing something wrong.”

“Oh, don’t worry; I’ll pay for it.”

“Who wants you to pay for it?  Do you think I can’t afford to pay for a miserable cup!  You might say you’re sorry:  that’s all I want you to do.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I heard her, Gertie,” broke in Ed.

“She said she was sorry as if she was doing me a favor,” said Gertie, turning furiously on the would-be peacemaker.

“You don’t expect me to go down on my knees to you, do you?  The cup’s worth twopence.”

“It isn’t the value I’m thinking about, it’s the carelessness.”

“It’s only the third thing I’ve broken since I’ve been here.”

If Nora had been in a calmer mood herself she would not have been so stupid as to attempt to palliate her offense.  Her offer of replacing the miserable cup only added fuel to the flame of Gertie’s resentment.

“You can’t do anything!” she stormed.  “You’re more helpless than a child of six.  You’re all the same, all of you.”

“You’re not going to abuse the whole British nation because I’ve broken a cup worth twopence, are you?”

“And the airs you put on.  Condescending isn’t the word.  It’s enough to try the patience of a saint.”

“Oh, shut up!” said Marsh.  He went over to his wife and laid a hand on her shoulder.  She shook him off impatiently.

“You’ve never done a stroke of work in your life, and you come here and think you can teach me everything.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Nora, in a voice which by comparison with Gertie’s seemed low but which was nevertheless perfectly audible to every person in the room.  “I don’t know about that, but I think I can teach you manners.”

If she had lashed the other woman across the face with a whip, she couldn’t have cut more deeply.  She knew that, and was glad.  Gertie’s face turned gray.

“How dare you say that!  How dare you!  You come here, and I give you a home.  You sleep in my blankets and you eat my food and then you insult me.”  She burst into a passion of angry tears.

“Now then, Gertie, don’t cry.  Don’t be so silly,” said her husband as he might have spoken to an angry child.

“Oh, leave me alone,” she flashed back at him.  “Of course you take her part.  You would!  It’s nothing to you that I have made a slave of myself for you for three whole years.  As soon as she comes along and plays the lady——­”