“I believe she had a little legacy,” Lucy replied. “So if she wanted rest and change, nothing would be more natural than to visit relatives to whom a little board money would be helpful. But you seemed quite satisfied, Florence. You thought they were respectable.” “Oh, yes, for working people. He is a plumber, as you know by his card, but in a very small way. He’s this woman’s cousin, you know. I didn’t see him, I saw his wife. She told over again what the woman herself told us at the registry office; and when I asked one or two questions about the woman herself, she seemed hesitating, and I began to get suspicious till she said, ‘I shouldn’t like you to think we were wanting to get rid of Jessie, poor body.’ Then I understood why her assurances were not too gushing. She said, ‘Jessie, poor body, had just set her heart on coming to the nice young lady with the pretty little boy.’ Oh, it’s all right. Don’t expect too much. Then you won’t be disappointed.” “Well, she has been with me nearly two months now,” said Lucy, “and she has come up to all my hopes.” Mrs. Brand threw her sister a glance of indulgent disdain. “What did I hear you call her?” she asked. “Didn’t I hear ‘Mrs. Morison’? Is that so?” “Yes, certainly!” Lucy replied. “One would not call a middle-aged matron by her Christian name.” “Call her Morison, then,” suggested Mrs. Brand. Lucy shook her head. “She is a married woman and a widow,” she answered. “I am not going to take her status from her because she is working in my kitchen.” Mrs. Brand laughed. “Oh, that’s it, is it?” she said. “Well, she is so like a respectable lodging-house-keeper that I’ve no doubt strangers will give her the status of landlady of your house, and you’ll have the status of lodger!” “What strangers think does not matter to me,” returned Lucy. “She is Mrs. Morison as I am Mrs. Challoner. Who is in the kitchen and who is in the parlour does not alter that.” “No servant gets her name prefixed with ‘Mistress’ except housekeepers in great mansions,” asserted Mrs. Brand. Lucy laughed in her turn. “Then, instead of her being general servant of my house,” she said, “we will say she is the housekeeper in my little mansion.” Mrs. Brand took no notice of her sister’s words, but went on: “And those housekeepers themselves are called ‘mistress’ only by convention, not because they have been married. They are generally really ‘miss.’” “I know that quite well!” cried Lucy. “I know Miss Latimer has told me that once when she was going through a nobleman’s show palace, the great Dr. Guthrie was there too, and when he heard the housekeeper called ‘Mrs.’ Whatever-her-name-might-be, he whispered to somebody that he shouldn’t have thought she was a married woman, and he was told she was not, but she was styled so because she was the housekeeper. Then said he, ‘Henceforth I’ll call her “miss,” for these special fashions for domestic workers are just badges of servitude and relics of tyranny.’ And he kept his word.”