Mrs. Oliver was a round little fat bunch of a woman, if I may say so in speaking of master’s own aunt by marriage, and him a baronet.  She had the most lovely jewellery, and was very fond of wearing it of an evening, more than most people do when they are staying with relations and there’s no company.  She never spoke much except to say, ‘Yes, Dick dear,’ and ‘No, Dick dear,’ when they spoke to each other; but they were as fond of each other as pigeons on a roof, and always very pleasant-spoken and nice to wait on.

As for James, he was the jolliest man I ever met, and cook said the same.  He was like Sam Weller in the book, or would have been if he had lived in those far-off times; but footmen are more genteel now than they were then.

Anyway, he hadn’t been at the Court twenty-four hours before he was first favourite with every one, and cook made him a Welsh rabbit with her own hands, ’cause he hadn’t been able to get his dinner comfortable with the rest of us—­a thing she wouldn’t have done for Sir William himself at that time of night.  As for me, the first time he looked at me with his jolly blue eyes—­it was when he met me carrying a tray the first morning after he came—­my heart gave a jump inside my print gown, and I said to it as I went downstairs—­ ‘You’ve met your master, I’m thinking’; and if I did go to church with him the very first Sunday, which was more than ever I had done with any of the others, it was after he had asked me plain and straight to go to church with him some day for good and all.

Now, the next morning, quite early, I was dusting the library, when John come in with his black face like a thundercloud.

‘Look here, Mary,’ he says; ’what do you mean by going to church with that stuck-up London trumpery?’

‘Mind your own business,’ says I, sharp as you please.

‘I am,’ he says.  ’You are my business—­the only business I care a damn about, or am ever likely to.  You don’t know how I love you, Mary,’ he says.  And I was sorry for him as he spoke.  ’I would lie down in the dirt for you to walk on if it would do you any good, so long as you didn’t walk over me to get to some other chap.’

‘I am very sorry for you, John,’ says I, ’but I’ve told you, not once or twice, but fifty times, that it can never be.  And there are plenty of other girls that would be only too glad to walk out with a young man like you without your troubling yourself about me.’

He was walking up and down the room like a cat in a cage.  Presently he began to laugh in a nasty, sly, disagreeable way.

‘Oh! you think he’ll marry you, do you?’ says he.  ’But he’s just amusing himself with you till he gets back to London to his own girl.  You let him see you was only amusing yourself with him, and you come out with me when you get your evening.’

And he took the dusting-brush out of my hand, and caught hold of my wrists.

‘It’s all a lie!’ I cried; ’and I wonder you can look me in the face and tell it.  Him and me are going to be married as soon as he has saved enough for a little public, and I never want to speak to you again; and if you don’t let go of my hands, I’ll scream till I fetch the house down, master and all, and then where will you be?’