ned out that Mrs Cakebread had fancied herself insulted, by my saying good-morning to the kitchen-maid and the knife-boy before I said it to her; and Charles thought I meant to tease him, by wishing him good-morning at all. It was all the most trifling sort of nonsense, and enough to make a cat laugh; but it was life and death to them—I suppose, it would be life and death to you, if all you had to look forward to for the next forty years was carrying trays and baking pastry. Anyway, I saw that, if I was to get anywhere with them, I must watch my steps. I gave Charles a bit of chocolate, that I had carried down with me from the Borough and never eaten; I gave Margaret a piece of scented soap; and to Mrs Cakebread I gave a pair of those black stockings that Gentleman had had Phil get for me from the crooked warehouse.
I said I hoped there were no hard feelings. If I met Charles on the stairs in the morning, then, I looked the other way. They were all much nicer to me after that.
That''s like a servant. A servant says, All for my master,'' and means, All for myself. It''s the two-facedness of it that I can''t bear. At Briar, they were all on the dodge in one way or another, but all over sneaking little matters that would have put a real thief to the blush—such as, holding off the fat from Mr Lilly''s gravy to sell on the quiet to the butcher''s boy; which is what Mrs Cakebread did. Or, pulling the pearl buttons from Maud''s chemises, and keeping them, and saying they were lost; which is what Margaret did. I had them all worked out, after three days'' watching. I might have been Mrs Sucksby''s own daughter after all. Mr Way, now: he had a mark on the side of his nose—in the Borough we should have called it a gin-bud. And how do you think he got that, in a place like his? He had the key to Mr Lilly''s cellar, on a chain. You never saw such a