“Now do tell us, there’s a dear man,” said cook, alias Sarah Stock, to Edward, the hard-faced footman, as he sat in front of the kitchen fire at Copse Hall, gently rubbing his shins and ruminating; while the housemaid, with her workbox on the table, was pretending to be busy over some piece of useful needlework, though she was watching Edward the hard-faced with all her might.

For it was that cosy half-hour after supper when all was at peace in the mansion; when the late dinner things had all been washed up, the kitchen tidied, and cook had performed the operation which she called setting herself straight—a manifest impossibility, for she was a circular woman of at least sixteen stone weight. All the same, though, she had changed her dress, polished her face till it shone, and then crowned herself with a gorgeous corona of lace and bright-hued ribbons and net-work, an edifice which she called her cap. The cat sat and purred upon the round smooth centre of the bright steel fender, winked at the fire, twitched its ears, and purred and ruminated at intervals; for it was fast nearing the hour when it would be shown the door for the night; so that it was getting itself thoroughly warmed through. The firelight danced in the bright tin dish-covers hung upon the wall, and then gleamed off, and dodged about from bright stewpan to brass candlestick, and back again to the clean crockery and the dresser; the old Dutch clock swung its pendulum busily to and fro, as if labouring under the mistake that it had nearly done work for the day; and altogether the place looked bright and snug, and spoke of the approaching hour of rest, when cook, having tapped the fire playfully here and there, to the destruction of several golden caverns in the centre, and taking up an apparently interrupted conversation, said, as above:

“Now, do tell us, there’s a dear man;” when the housemaid gave her head a toss, as much as to say, “What indelicacy!—don’t think I endorse that expression!”

Then she smiled with a kind of pitying contempt, for, according to her notions, cook and Edward were courting; and of course, if he chose to prefer a great fat coarse woman like that, he had a right to. An the slim maiden of thirty-eight bridled and looked almost as hard-faced as Edward himself. For though cook called him a dear man, it almost seemed at first as if she were bantering him, till it was taken into consideration that every eye forms its own beauty. In fact, just then Edward looked more hard-faced and grim than ever.

“You will tell us all about it, now won’t you?” said cook, for Edward remained silent.

“’Tain’t likely,” said Edward at last.

“Why not?” said cook.

“There was two buttons off my shirt in the very worst places on Sunday morning.”

“I am sorry!” exclaimed cook.

“Don’t believe it!” said Edward; “and it’s mean and unfair. Didn’t you say, if I’d always get your coals in, you’d always see to my buttons and darn my stockings? And at this present moment there’s a hole as big as a shilling in them as I’ve got on.”

“But it shan’t never occur again, Eddard, if you’ll only tell us; for Mary and me is as interested as can be.”

“O, I don’t care about knowing, if Mr Edward don’t choose to tell,” said the housemaid, with a toss of her head.

“Who’s trying to pick a quarrel now?” retorted Edward; “when missus said we was always to be peaceful and orderly in the kitchen.”

“Not me, I’m sure,” said the housemaid. “I wouldn’t bemean myself to quarrel.”

“Now don’t, dear,” said cook; “Mr Eddard’s agoin’ to tell us all about it, and really, you know, if it ain’t for all the world like chapters out o’ that book as missus had from Mugie’s libery—the one you brought up out of the drawin’-room, and read of a night when we was in bed.”

“Stuff!” said the housemaid tartly.

“Now, don’t say so, dear,” said the cook, who was particularly suave for once in her life. “There she is, just like a herrowine, and a nice-looking one too.”

“Get out! call her good-looking?” said the housemaid.

“Well, ’taint to be denied as she has what some folks would call good looks. Then you see she’s pussycuted by one lover, and another loves her to distraction, and his father won’t hear of it; and first one comes and then another, and then the father, and frightens the poor dear into fits, and goes away fainting—no, I mean goes away leaving her fainting away, and wanting salts and burnt feathers, and all sorts. Why, it’s for all the world like a real story in a book, that it is; and I declare the way Mr Eddard has told us all about it has been beautiful.”

“There’s soft soap,” growled the hard-faced footman, smiling grimly.

“That it ain’t now, I’m sure,” said cook. “It really was beautiful, and almost as good as seeing or reading it all. I’m sure I never lived in a house before where there was such goings on. I declare that bit where you told us about how you took the dandy by the scruff of his neck, and says to him, ‘Now, out you go, or I’ll stuff you up the chimney!’ was as exciting as could be. And so it was where you dragged him across the hall, and pitched him neck and crop down the front steps. I could a’most see it; and we both of us did hear the door slam.”

“Mr Eddard,” who had been slightly adding to the history of Ella’s visitors, smiled a little here, and his face relaxed somewhat from its stern expression.

“Lor’, what a nice clear fire!” said cook, who had detected the melting sign. “Let me hot you a sup of beer in a little stoopan, with a bit of nuckmeg and ginger, and a spoonful of sugar. Don’t say no, Eddard.”

“Yes, I shall,” said Edward, who was tightening up again. “I sha’n’t have none unless you two join with me.”

“Well, if it comes to that,” said cook, “sooner than you should go without, I’ll have the least taste in the world.”

The housemaid shook her head as if despising such excuses; but ten minutes after, when a mug of the hot sweet-scented compound was placed before her by cook, who winked at Edward as she did so, the lady of the dustpan and brush condescended to simper, and say, “O, the very idee!” Then she smiled, and at the end of another ten minutes the trio were all smiling as they sat with their feet on the fender, Edward regaling himself and his fellow-servants with an account of what had taken place during the afternoon.

“I should say it was as near as could be three o’clock,” said Edward punctiliously; “it might have been a little after, though I hadn’t heard it strike, or it might have been a little before: I ain’t certain. Anyhow, it was as near as could be to three o’clock when the front-door bell rings.

“‘Visitor for Miss Bedford,’ I says to myself, laughing like, and meaning it as a joke; for as we’d had one that day, I didn’t of course expect no more.”

“What time was it as Sir Philip Vining went away?” said cook, who was deeply interested.

“O, that was before lunch,” said Edward.

“To be sure, so it was,” said the housemaid.

“Well, I slips on my coat—for I was dusting the glasses over before going to lay the dinner-cloth—and up I goes.”

“And up you goes,” said cook; for Edward had paused to soften his hard face with a little more of the stewpan decoction.

“Yes, up I goes, to find it was Mr Charles Vining, looking as bright and happy as could be—quite another man to what he was when he come last week.

“‘Ah,’ I says to myself, ‘you don’t know about your governor being here afore lunch, young man, or you’d be laughing the other side of your mouth.’ But I says aloud:

“‘To see Miss Bedford, sir?’

“‘No, my man,’ he says; and he looked at me very curious and hesitating, as if he’d like to have said ‘yes.’

“‘Show me in to your mistress,’ he says.”

“Now it’s a-coming!” said cook, rocking herself to and fro with excitement, and rubbing her hands softly together.

“Now what’s a-coming, stoopid?” said Edward gruffly. “What d’ye mean?”

“I—I only meant that the interesting bit was now coming—the denowment, you know,” said cook humbly, and seeking to mollify the insulted narrator by emptying the little stewpan, cloves, bits of ginger, and all into his mug.

“If you’re so precious clever, you’d better tell it yourself,” grow............