"Get ’ee off and pack your box," she said sharply, "and think yourself lucky, Betty Hanson, as ’ee hev found another home, and a kind mistress, too kind I be afeared! Too kind and lenient like wi’ ’ee and your folly, my maid!"
Kathleen’s face was very thoughtful, a little sad even, as she walked back along the white dusty road. She hardly saw the village folk, who bobbed and curtseyed to her as she passed. She saw only a sweet oval face, a glorious head of glittering hair, a pair of sad, wistful blue eyes.
"So these people do, as their betters!" she thought. "They drive and goad their children into unhappy marriages! My Lord’s daughter must be made to marry thirty thousand a year, as little Betty, Mrs. Hanson’s granddaughter, is to be forced into marriage with thirty shillings a week! How wrong and what a shame it all is! Money, rank, position and interest! Is there no such thing as love left in the world at all? May not a man choose his mate, a woman choose for herself from among all men, the one she loves? It seems not, in village or in city, in cottage or in palace, and I——" she paused. "I did as I was bidden and I am happier perhaps than I deserve to be!"
Kathleen, unlike other well born young ladies of Society, had had no maid, in the old days she could not afford one. Amy, the parlour maid, had assisted her into the dresses that were so very seldom paid for, and Kathleen had long since adopted the unladylike practice of doing her own hair. So when she came to Homewood she had decided to continue without a maid, though the funds were not lacking now and the dresses were certainly paid for.
Of course little Betty Hanson would not know a tithe of those things that a good and practiced lady’s maid should know. She would not be able to do her ladyship’s hair in the latest and most becoming style. She would not be able to select gowns suitable for special occasions. She would not be able to massage my lady’s white hands and perhaps her face. She would not be able to flatter and fawn and sponge and perhaps rob and lie. No, Betty Hanson was not likely to have any of these desirable accomplishments.
Kathleen had an honest admiration for beauty. She was one of those rare women who can see and appreciate beauty in another woman. She would have everything about her beautiful if she could. She feared that perhaps to those who were unbeautiful, she was a little unjust. To Ann, the very plain housemaid who came from the Fulham Road, for instance, Kathleen was more than unusually kind and generous, because in her heart of hearts she did not like Ann. And she believed that she did not like Ann because Ann had a sallow, greasy skin, a misshapen nose and small mean eyes, set too closely together and a loose, nondescript kind of mouth.