Torchy
Piddie is the most pleased of any. He thinks he's right to home among carriage folks, and every time she comes near he bows and scrapes and begins to shoot off the "Aw, I'm suah's" and the "Don'tcher know's," until74 you'd think he was talkin' through a mouthful of hot breakfast food.

74

"Chee!" says I to him. "You act like you thought this was a five o'clock tea."

"I trust," says he, "I know a lady when I see one, and that I know how to treat her too."

"That's so," says I. "Too bad you wa'n't on the stage, Piddie, in one of them 'Me lu'd, the carriage waits' parts."

That gives me a cue, and the next time she sends me for supplies I says to him, "Mr. Piddie," says I, "the Lady Mildred presents her compliments and says she wants a new paste brush."

Gets him wild, that does; so I sticks to it. The others hears it and picks it up too, and she wa'n't called anything but Lady Mildred from that on. First thing I knew I'd said it to her face; but she never so much as looks surprised. You'd thought she'd been called Lady Mildred all her life.

"Who knows?" says Piddie. "Perhaps she has."

Honest, we was makin' up all kinds of pipe dreams about her, and believin' 'em as we went along. There was no findin' out from her what was so and what she wa'n't. She never gets real chummy with anyone; but keeps us jollied along about so much. It was dead easy. All she had to do was to throw a smile our way, and75 we was tickled for a week. Wasn't anyone around the place needed so much waitin' on as her; but no one ever minds. Gen'rally there was two or three on the jump for her, and others willin' to be.

75

Course, that don't include Mr. Robert. He seems to think Lady Mildred was some kind of a joke; but, then, I expect he sees so many stunners like her every night, knockin' around at dinner parties and such, that he gets tired lookin' at 'em. I'd been carryin' it against him, though, and maybe that's what put it into my nut to get so gay with Louie.

Louie's the gent in the leather leggin's and north-pole outfit that comes around after Mr. Robert every night with the machine. Say, it's a reg'lar rollin' bay window, that car of Mr. Robert's! I wouldn't mind havin' one of that kind taggin' around after me. But if I was pickin' a shover I'd pass Louie by. He 
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