FullReads

“From that point of view,” said he, “I’m confident that Jane will do.”

So Jane came, and for a year, strange to relate, was all that her references claimed for her. She was neat, clean, and capable. She was sober and industrious. The wine had never been better served; the dinner had rarely come to the table so hot. Had she been a butler of the first magnitude she could not so have discouraged the idea of acquaintance; her attraction, if anything, was a combination of her self-effacement and her ugliness. The latter might have been noticed as she entered the dining-room; it was soon forgotten in the unconsciously observed ease with which she went through her work.

“She’s fine,” said Perkins, after a dinner of twelve covers served by Jane with a pantry assistant. “I’ve always had a sneaking notion that nothing short of a butler could satisfy me, but now I think otherwise. Jane is perfection, and there is nothing paralyzing about her, as there is about most of those reduced swells who wait on tables nowadays.”

In August the family departed for the mountains, and the house was left in charge of Jane and the cook, and right faithfully did they fulfil the requirements of their stewardship. The return in September found the house cleaned from top to bottom. The hardwood floors and stairs shone as they had rarely shone before, and as only an unlimited application of what is vulgarly termed “elbow-grease” could make them shine. The linen was immaculate. Ireland is not freer from snakes than was the house of Perkins from cobwebs, and no speck of dust except those on the travellers was visible. It was evident that even in the absence of the family Jane was true to her ideals, and the heart of Mrs. Perkins was glad. Furthermore, Jane had acquired a full third set of teeth, which seemed to take some of the lines from her face, and, as Perkins observed, added materially to the general effect of the surroundings, although they were distressingly new. But, alas! they marked the beginning of the end. Jane ceased to wait upon the table with that solemnity which is essential to the manner of a “treasure”; she smiled occasionally, and where hitherto she had treated the conversation at the table with stolid indifference, a witticism would invariably now bring the new teeth unto view.

“Alas!” cried Thaddeus, “our butleress has evoluted backwards. She grins like an ordinary waitress.”

It was too true. The possession of brilliantly white teeth seemed to have brought with it a desire to show them, which was destructive of that dignity with which Jane had previously been hedged about, and substituted for it a less desirable atmosphere of possible familiarity, which might grow upon very slight provocation into intimacy, not to mention a nearer approach to social equality.

“I don’t suppose we can blame her exactly,” said Perkins, when discussing one or two of Jane’s lapses from her old-time standard. “I haven’t a doubt that if I’d gone for years without teeth, I’d become a regular Cheshire cat, with a new, complete edition de luxe of celluloid molars. Still, I wish she’d paid more attention to the dinner and less to Mr. Barlow’s conversation last night. She stood a whole minute, with the salad-bowl in her hand, waiting for him to reach the point of his story about the plumber who put a gas-pipe through Shakespeare’s tenor in Westminster Abbey, and when he finished, and she smiled, you’d have thought a dozen gravestones to the deceased’s memory had been conjured up before us.”

“It’s a small fault, Thaddeus,” returned Mrs. Perkins, “but I’ll speak to her about it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t,” said Perkins; “let it go; she means well, and when we got her we didn’t suspect she’d turn out such a jewel. She’s merely approaching her norm, that is all. We ought to be thankful to have had such perfection for one year. It’s too bad it couldn’t continue; but what perfection does?”