"Oh, I had got you by heart," she returned, "from books and drawings and photos; I had you in my pocket when I came: so, you see, as soon as you were so good as to give me my head and let me loose, I knew my way about. It's all here, every inch of it," she competently continued, "and now at last I can do what I want!"
A light of consternation, at this, just glimmered in Chivers's face. "And pray, mum, what might that be?"
"Why, take you right back with me--to Missoura Top."
This answer seemed to fix his bewilderment, but he was there for the general convenience.
"Do I understand you, mum, that you require to take _me_?"
Her particular convenience, on the spot, embraced him, so new and delightful a sense had he suddenly read into her words. "Do you mean to say you'd come--as the old Family Servant? Then _do_, you nice real thing: it's just what I'm dying for--an old Family Servant! You're somebody's else, yes--but everything, over here, is somebody's else, and I want, too, a first-rate second-hand one, all ready made, as you are, but not too much done up. You're the best I've seen yet, and I wish I could have you packed--put up in paper and bran--as I shall have my old pot there." She whisked about, remembering, recovering, eager: "Don't let me _forget_ my precious pot!" Excited, with quick transitions, she quite sociably appealed to her companion, who shuffled sympathetically to where, out of harm, the object had been placed on a table. "Don't you just love old crockery? That's awfully sweet old Chelsea."
He took up the piece with tenderness, though, in his general agitation, not perhaps with all the caution with which, for daily service, he handled ancient frailties. He at any rate turned on this fresh subject an interested, puzzled eye. "Where is it I've known this very bit--though not to say, as _you_ do, by name?" Suddenly it came to him. "In the pew-opener's front parlour!"
"No," his interlocutress cried, "in the pew-opener's best bedroom: on the old chest of drawers, you know--with those ducks of brass handles. I've got the handles too--I mean the whole thing; and the brass fender and fire-irons, and the chair her grandmother died in. Not in the fly," she added--"it was such a bore that they have to be sent."