I'll tell him how comfortable we
are. He'll see I look well taken care of."
"But for all that I'm afraid he may--he may--"
"Why, we're going to be tremendously taken care of. Even he will see
that. Only think--I've engaged twenty-five cooks."
"Twenty-five cooks?" echoed Lady Shuttleworth, staring in spite of her
sorrows. "But isn't my kitchenmaid--?"
"Oh she left us almost at once. She couldn't stand my uncle. He is
rather difficult to stand at first. You have to know him quite a long
while before you can begin to like him. And I don't think kitchenmaids
ever would begin."
"But my dear, twenty-five cooks?"
And Priscilla explained how and why she had come by them; and though
Lady Shuttleworth, remembering the order till now prevailing in the
village and the lowness of the wages, could not help thinking that
here was a girl more potent for mischief than any girl she had ever
met, yet a feeble gleam of amusement did, as she listened, slant
across the inky blackness of her soul.
Tussie was sitting up in bed with a great many pillows behind him,
finding immense difficulty in breathing, when his mother, her bonnet
off and every trace of having been out removed, came in and said Miss
Neumann-Schultz was downstairs.
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