“Do you know anything about Jane Smith’s own people?” asked Lucy.
“No,” she replied. “I have never found it necessary to make any inquiries. I allow no visitors. I give my servants one half-day off every week, but I don’t give it always on a regular day. I think that is a good plan. They get out on Sunday evening, when I expect them to go to the pew which I occupy in the morning. I think that is giving them every opportunity to be steady and respectable if they desire to be so.” The mistress herself prepared to show Mrs. Challoner to the door. She checked herself, however, to ask if her visitor would like to see Jane then or to have a call from her that evening, and Lucy accepted the latter alternative.
Three hours later Jane Smith came up to Mrs. Challoner’s house to hear the result of the inquiries about her. Lucy resolved to have a little conversation with the girl, to see if she could discover any bit of genuine human nature beneath the professional automaton which was all that her last mistress had required. Indeed she felt she must learn something more about the girl than that mistress had ever known.
“No, ma’am,” answered Jane with a slight hesitancy, for which it seemed hard to account. Could some mistress have raised an objection to country girls?
“To what part of the country do you belong?” Lucy went on.
“I didn’t belong to the country, ma’am,” she said. “I’ve always lived in a town. I come from Hull.”
“Oh, I understand,” Lucy replied. “Have you any relatives or friends in London?”
“Nor any friends?” she pressed. “No friends at all? Are you engaged to be married or likely to be so?”
“Do your people know him?” Lucy persisted.
“They’ve never seen him yet, ma’am. He hopes to go down there with a cheap trip next Easter. It’s a long way for poor folks.”
“If this is a real serious love affair, Jane—no mere silly flirting, I shall give you leave to let him come to see you once a week,” said Lucy.
Then for the first time in the whole interview she volunteered a remark.
“The last mistress—the one you saw—she didn’t allow followers. That was why I gave her notice.”
“But she might have made a concession if you had asked her specially,” Lucy remarked, with a laudable desire to be loyal to her own order. “You did not do so?” she added interrogatively.