they’ve gone!” 

 “I didn’t see her ladyship.” 

 “You didn’t miss much! A nasty, dangerous specimen, she is! ‘Always merry and bright’, I don’t think. I wish you’d have had my job of waiting on ’em, Ellen, and me been the one to stay in the kitchen safe out of it all. That’s all I say! It’s no treat to me to ‘and the dishes when the atmosphere’s what you might call electric. I didn’t envy them that vol-au-vent of yours, Ellen, good as it smelt. Better a dinner of ’erbs where love is than a stalled ox and ’atred therewith,” said Parker, helping himself to a walnut. 

 “Did they have words?” 

 Parker shook his head impatiently. 

 “That sort don’t have words, Ellen. They just sit and goggle.” 

 “How did her ladyship seem to hit it off with Miss Mariner, Horace?” 

 Parker uttered a dry laugh. 

 “Ever seen a couple of strange dogs watching each other sort of wary? That was them! Not that Miss Mariner wasn’t all that was pleasant and nice-spoken. She’s all right, Miss Mariner is. She’s a little queen! It wasn’t her fault the dinner you’d took so much trouble over was more like an evening in the Morgue than a Christian dinner-party. She tried to help things along best she could. But what with Sir Derek chewing his lip ’alf the time and his mother acting about as matey as a pennorth of ice-cream, she didn’t have a chance. As for the guv’nor,—well, I wish you could have seen him, that’s all. You know, Ellen, sometimes I’m not altogether easy in my mind about the guv’nor’s mental balance. He knows how to buy cigars, and you tell me his port is good—I never touch it myself—but sometimes he seems to me to go right off his onion. Just sat there, he did, all through dinner, looking as if he expected the good food to rise up and bite him in the face, and jumping nervous when I spoke to him. It’s not my fault,” said Parker, aggrieved. “I can’t give gentlemen warning before I ask ’em if they’ll have sherry or hock. I can’t ring a bell or toot a horn to show ’em I’m coming. It’s my place to bend over and whisper in their ear, and they’ve no right to leap about in their seats and make me spill good wine. (You’ll see the spot close by where you’re sitting, Ellen. Jogged my 

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