y young, and with no-one at all to care for me. I cannot tell you all the ways in which Mrs Stiles has made me know what a mother''s love is, since that time.''
She smiled and tilted her head. Mrs Stiles would not catch her
gaze, but a bit of colour struggled into her cheeks, and her eye-lids fluttered. I should never have put her down as the motherly sort, myself; but servants grow sentimental over the swells they work for, like dogs grow fond of bullies. You take my word for it.
Anyway, she blinked and looked modest another minute; and then she left us. Maud smiled again, and led me to one of the hard-backed sofas, that was close to the fire. She sat beside me. She asked after my journey—''We supposed you lost!'' she said—and after my room. Did I like my bed? Did I like my breakfast?
And have you really,'' she said, ''come from London?'' That was all that anyone had been asking, since I left Lant Street—as if I might have come from anywhere else! But then again, I thought she asked it in a different sort of way: not in a gaping country way, but in a noticing, hungryish manner—as if London was something to her, and she longed to hear of it.
Of course, I thought I knew why that was.
Next she told me all the duties I should have to do, while I was her maid: the chief of these being, as I also knew, to sit with her and keep her company, and walk with her about the park, and tidy her gowns. She lowered her eyes.