"No! It wouldn’t do me a bit of good to get ahead in business if I--didn’t have nice ways. No! I watched the papers a long time for something I could have a try at, and then I saw Mrs. Russell’s ad, with ‘experience unnecessary.’ I knew I wasn’t the kind of girl that they want for a companion, but I thought if I could show ’em that I could be more useful than any one else, I might stand a chance." He was silent for a time, while the servant reentered with a cantaloupe for Angelica and porridge for him. Then he looked up and studied her face. "I think--if I’d understood the case better, perhaps----” he said. "But, anyway, why don’t you stay as my mother’s maid? There’s no use having a silly pride about such things. There always has to be a beginning." "No!" she said again. "There’s no sense in that. If I can’t be--oh, right in the family, kind of, it won’t help me. I’ll go. I couldn’t stand being a servant." He didn’t say any more, but continued his breakfast with hearty appetite, and with a dexterity which she found herself quite unable to copy. At last he had finished, and pushed back his chair. "I’ve been thinking," he said. "You’re evidently out of the ordinary. I don’t see why you shouldn’t be given a chance--if you’re really anxious to improve yourself." He rose. "I’ll speak to Mrs. Geraldine this evening, when I get home," he said. "If she agrees, you shall stay. Good morning!" He went out abruptly, leaving Angelica alone at the table. She jumped up in a violent hurry, before the servant could return and find her defenseless, and went out into the hall. She had no idea where to go, what to do; she was bewildered and rather miserable. The young man hadn’t made any effort to spare her feelings. Suggesting that she should be a servant! "He’s got a nerve, all right!" she said to herself, but half-heartedly. Really she thought that he was right in all that he had said, and that, in spite of his uncompromising frankness, he had been friendly. She liked him. "But _she’s_ different," she reflected. "I won’t let _her_ trample all over me!" She recalled the previous evening with burning shame. Those French words! She felt that Mrs. Russell had been unfair and unkind, and she went up-stairs, to find her, with deep reluctance. She was determined not to be meek and not to be frightened. "You’ve got to act like you were somebody!" she said to herself. "You’ve got to show ’em you won’t stand any of their nonsense. People take you at your own valuation!" That was a favorite phrase of hers. She had read it often, and it quite fell in with her cheap and pitiful philosophy. It was true enough, too, among the people she knew--people who weren’t capable of judging or analyzing a fellow being. She herself took others at their own valuation, because of an unconscious conviction that she was incapable of making an original appraisement. So, resolutely looking as if she were somebody, she knocked at Mrs. Russell’s door.