The guile had succeeded, too. Tom Bradshaw was not a strong man of his faction without knowing that there is a cant of the underdog as of the upper, and he had suspected her of “beggar’s cunning.” Then she had won him round; he had remembered that she was of his clan, he had felt that there, but for the grace of God and the difference of age and sex, went Tom Bradshaw, and he had gone partners with Walter in her future. She had conquered males, but she feared Mrs. Butterworth and drew closer to the fire lest the woman should detect her as not so unsophisticated as she seemed nor so young as she looked. She did not know Mrs. Butterworth nor the strength of Mrs. Butterworth’s affection for Walter. Mrs. Butterworth was, in nominal office, his housekeeper; actually she was slave, without knowing she was slave, to a man who did not know he had enslaved her. Stoically she took whatever came from Walter, and things like lost kittens and broken-legged puppies came habitually. This time, making unprecedently a call upon her tolerance, a girl came and Mrs. Butterworth might have been provoked into defining the duties of a housekeeper to a bachelor. Instead, she listened to instructions, put on an overall, got out her disinfectants and prepared to clean Mary Ellen and to burn her clothes with a placid competence which asserted that she was not to be overcome by any freak of Walter’s, no matter how eccentric. “If she’s to go into the spare bed,” she said, “she’ll go clean.” No need to dwell on happenings in the bathroom; they were there for a long time, and when Mary Ellen came out, wrapped in a night-dress of Mrs. Butterworth’s, she felt raw from head to foot. But she had two satisfactions which sent her very happily to sleep in spite of her rawness. One was bread and milk in quantity, the other was the assurance she derived from the looking-glass that if her parents saw her, they would not recognize her. Her voice had been an asset to her parents who had been therefore not so indifferent to the existence of their Mary Ellen as her story had suggested. Mrs. Butterworth returned to the sitting room. “She’s in bed,” she reported. “Thank you,” said Walter and then, by way of explanation, added, “She can sing.” “I thought it would be that,” she said. “Yes, yes, it is quite extraordinarily that. Did I make it clear to you that she will live here?” “I’ll keep her clean,” said Mrs. Butterworth, shouldering the burden. “And she had better be described as my niece, from, let us say, Oldham. You will buy her clothes to-morrow. Her name is Mary. We will call her Mary Pate.” “It’s a good name to take risks with,” she warned him. “Wait till I’ve taught her how to sing.” “Oh, aye,” she said, with seeming skepticism; but she was not skeptical. She accepted Mary, she believed in her because Walter believed in her and because his belief was so strong that he bestowed on her the name of Pate. That settled, for Mrs. Butterworth, that Mary was remarkable.