“Well, then,” was her mother’s comment, “after all, there’s nothing disgraceful.”

“I never thought there was.”

“Then why have you refused to enter his shop?”

“It was awkward,” replied Bertha.

“No more awkward for you than for me,” said Mrs. Cross.  “But I’ve noticed, Bertha, that you are getting rather selfish in some things —­I don’t of course say in everything—­and I think it isn’t difficult to guess where that comes from.”

Soon after Christmas they were left, by a familiar accident, without a servant; the girl who had been with them for the last six months somehow contrived to get her box secretly out of the house and disappeared (having just been paid her wages) without warning.  Long and loudly did Mrs. Cross rail against this infamous behaviour.

The next morning, a young woman came to the house and inquired for Mrs. Cross; Bertha, who had opened the door, led her into the dining room, and retired.  Half an hour later, Mrs. Cross came into the parlour, beaming.

“There now!  If that wasn’t a good idea!  Who do you think sent that girl, Bertha?—­Mr. Jollyman.”

Bertha kept silence.

“I had to go into the shop yesterday, and I happened to speak to Mr. Jollyman of the trouble I had in finding a good servant.  It occurred to me that he might just possibly know of some one.  He promised to make inquiries, and here at once comes the nicest girl I’ve seen for a long time.  She had to leave her last place because it was too hard; just fancy, a shop where she had to cook for sixteen people, and see to five bedrooms; no wonder she broke down, poor thing.  She’s been resting for a month or two:  and she lives in the same house as a person named Mrs. Hopper, who is the sister of the wife of Mr. Jollyman’s assistant.  And she’s quite content with fifteen pounds—­quite.”

As she listened, Bertha wrinkled her forehead, and grew rather absent.  She made no remark, until, after a long account of the virtues she had already descried in Martha—­this was the girl’s name—­Mrs. Cross added that of course she must go at once and thank Mr. Jollyman.

“I suppose you still address him by that name?” fell from Bertha.

“That name?  Why, I’d really almost forgotten that it wasn’t his real name.  In any case, I couldn’t use the other in the shop, could I?”

“Of course not; no.”

“Now you speak of it, Bertha,” pursued Mrs. Cross, “I wonder whether he knows that I know who he is?”

“Certainly he does.”

“When one thinks of it, wouldn’t it be better, Bertha, for you to go to the shop again now and then?  I’m afraid the poor man may feel hurt.  He must have noticed that you never went again after that discovery, and one really wouldn’t like him to think that you were offended.”

“Offended?” echoed the girl with a laugh.  “Offended at what?”

“Oh, some people, you know, might think his behaviour strange—­ using a name that’s not his own, and—­and so on.”