“I do mean it,” declared Mrs. Korner, “I like a man to be a man.”
“But you would not like Christopher—I mean Mr. Korner—to be that sort of man,” suggested her bosom friend.
“I don't mean that I should like it if he did it often. But I should like to feel that he was able to be that sort of man.—Have you told your master that breakfast is ready?” demanded Mrs. Korner of the domestic staff, entering at the moment with three boiled eggs and a teapot.
“Yus, I've told 'im,” replied the staff indignantly.
The domestic staff at Acacia Villa, Ravenscourt Park, lived in a state of indignation. It could be heard of mornings and evenings saying its prayers indignantly.
“What did he say?”
“Said 'e'll be down the moment 'e's dressed.”
“Nobody wants him to come before,” commented Mrs. Korner. “Answered me that he was putting on his collar when I called up to him five minutes ago.”
“Answer yer the same thing now, if yer called up to 'im agen, I 'spect,” was the opinion of the staff. “Was on 'is 'ands and knees when I looked in, scooping round under the bed for 'is collar stud.”
Mrs. Korner paused with the teapot in her hand. “Was he talking?”
“Talkin'? Nobody there to talk to; I 'adn't got no time to stop and chatter.”
“I mean to himself,” explained Mrs. Korner. “He—he wasn't swearing?” There was a note of eagerness, almost of hope, in Mrs. Korner's voice.
“Swearin'! 'E! Why, 'e don't know any.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Korner. “That will do, Harriet; you may go.”
Mrs. Korner put down the teapot with a bang. “The very girl,” said Mrs. Korner bitterly, “the very girl despises him.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Miss Greene, “he had been swearing and had finished.”
But Mrs. Korner was not to be comforted. “Finished! Any other man would have been swearing all the time.”
“Perhaps,” suggested the kindly bosom friend, ever the one to plead the cause of the transgressor, “perhaps he was swearing, and she did not hear him. You see, if he had his head well underneath the bed—”
The door opened.