The Motor Maid. C. N. Williamson

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СКАЧАТЬ heroines of the novels which are sure to be her favourites. Once, she must have been handsome, a hollyhock queen of a kitchen-garden kingdom; but she would be far more attractive now if only she had "abdicated," as nice middle-aged women say in France.

      Her dress was the very latest dream of a neurotic Parisian modiste, and would have been seductive on a slender girl. On her—well, at least she would have her wish in it—she would not pass unnoticed!

      She looked surprised at sight of me, and I saw she didn't realize that I was the expected candidate.

      "Lady Kilmarny couldn't come," I began to explain, "and—"

      "Oh!" she cut me short. "So you are the young person she is recommending as a maid."

      I corrected Miss Paget when she called me a "young woman," but times have changed since then, and in future I must humbly consent to be a young person, or even a creature.

      For a minute I forgot, and almost sat down. It would have been the end of me if I had! Luckily I remembered What I was, and stood before my mistress, trying to look like Patience on a monument with butter in her mouth which mustn't be allowed to melt.

      "What is your name?" began the catechism (and the word was "nime," according to Lady Turnour).

      "N or M," nearly slipped out of my mouth, but I put Satan with all his mischief behind me, and answered that I was Lys d'Angely.

      "Oh, the surname doesn't matter. As you're a French girl, I shall call you by your first name. It's always done."

      (The first time in history, I'd swear, that a d'Angely was ever told his name didn't matter!)

      "You seem to speak English very well for a French woman?" (This almost with suspicion.)

      "My mother was American."

      "How extraordinary!"

      (This was apparently a tache. Evidently lady's-maids are expected not to have American mothers!)

      "Let me hear your French accent."

      I let her hear it.

      "H'm! It seems well enough. Paris?"

      "Paris, madame."

      "Don't call me 'madame.' Any common person is madame. You should say 'your ladyship'."

      I said it.

      "And I want you should speak to me in the third person, like the French servants are supposed to do in good houses."

      "If mad—if your ladyship wishes."

      (Thank heaven for a sense of humour! My one wild desire was to laugh. Without that blessing, I should have yearned to slap her.)

      "What references have you got from your last situation?"

      "I have never been in service before—my lady."

      "My word! That's bad. However, you're on the spot, and Lady Kilmarny recommends you. The poor Princess was going to try you, it seems. I should think she wouldn't have given much for a maid without any experience."

      "I was to have had two thousand francs a year as the Princess's com—if the Princess was satisfied."

      "Preposterous! I don't believe a word of it. Why, what can you do? Can you dress hair? Can you make a blouse?"

      "I did my mother's hair, and sometimes my cousin's."

      "Your mother! Your cousin! I'm talking of a lidy."

      My sense of humour did almost fail me just then. But I caught hold of it by the tail just as it was darting out of the window, spitting and scratching like a cross cat.

      It was remembering Monsieur Charretier that brought me to my bearings. "I think your ladyship would be satisfied," I said. "And I make all my own dresses."

      "That one you've got on?—which is most unsuitable for a maid, I may tell you, and I should never permit it."

      "This one I have on, also."

      "I thought maybe it had been a present. Well, it's something that you speak both English and French passably well. I'll try you on Lady Kilmarny's recommendation, if you want to come to me for fifty francs a month. I won't give more to an amateur."

      I thought hard for a minute. Lady Kilmarny had said it would not be many weeks before the Turnours went to England. There, if Miss Paget (who seemed extremely nice by contrast and in retrospect) were still of the same mind, I might find a good home. If not, she was as kind as she was queer, and would help me look further. So I replied that I would accept the fifty francs, and would do my best to please her ladyship.

      She did not express herself as gratified. "You can begin work this evening," she said. "I was obliged to send away my last maid yesterday, and I'm lost without one." (This was delightful from a "lidy" who had kept lodgers for years, with the aid perhaps of one smudgy-nosed "general"!) "But have you no more suitable clothes? I can't let a maid of mine go flaunting about, like a Mary-Jane-on-Sunday."

      I mentioned a couple of plain black dresses in my wardrobe, which might be made to answer if I were allowed a few hours' time to work upon them, and didn't add that they remained from my mourning for one dearly loved.

      "You can have till six o'clock free," said Lady Turnour. "Then you must come back to lay out my things for dinner, and dress me. What about your room? Had the Princess taken something for you in the hotel?"

      I evaded a direct answer by saying that I had a room; and was inwardly thankful that, evidently, the Turnours had not noticed me in the restaurant at luncheon, otherwise things might have been awkward.

      "Very well, you can keep the same one, then," went on her ladyship, "and let the hotel people know it's Sir Samuel who pays for it. To-morrow morning we leave, in our sixty-horse-power motor car. We are making a tour before going back to England. Sir Samuel's stepson joins us in Paris or perhaps before and travels on with us. He is staying now with some French people of very high title, who live in a château. You will sit on the front seat with the chauffeur."

      This was a blow! I hadn't thought of the chauffeur. "But," thought I, "chauffeur or no chauffeur, it's too late now for retreat."

      Talk of Prometheus with his vulture, the Spartan boy with his decently concealed wolf! What of Lys d'Angely with an English chauffeur in her pocket?

CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

      When I was dismissed from the Presence, I ran to Lady Kilmarny with my story, and she agreed with me that the thing to dread most in the whole situation was the chauffeur.

      "Of course he'll naturally consider himself on an equality with you," she said, "and you'll have to eat with him at hotels, and all that. Once, when my husband and I were touring in France, and used to break down near little inns, we were obliged to have a chauffeur at the same table with us, because there СКАЧАТЬ