"Nancy," he ventured one morning, "I have been observing your manner to the servants with--er--disapproval. A habitual lack of consideration is a serious deficiency. It is really a lack of breeding--and of heart. A lady"--he fixed his large dark eyes upon her--"is never impolite." He touched her on the quick. She _knew_ these Champneys didn't think she was a lady, but for this old man to come right out and say so to her face--"Say, I guess I know how to be a lady without you havin' to tell me!" "I am more than willing to be convinced," said the South Carolinian, pointedly. At that, of a sudden, Nancy flared. She lifted a pair of sullen and mutinous eyes, and her lips quivered. He saw with surprise that she was trembling. "Say, you look here--I done what you told me to do, didn't I? I ain't no more nor no less a lady than I was before I done it, am I? What you pickin' on me for, then? What more you want?" He sighed. Milly's niece was distinctly difficult, to say the least. How, he asked himself desperately, was one to make a dent in her appalling ignorance? She irritated him. And as is usual with people who do not understand, he took exactly the wrong course with her. "I want you at least to try to live up to your position," he said with cold directness, beetling his brows at her. "I want you to do what you're told--and to keep on doing it! Do you understand that?" He felt that he was allowing himself to be more wrought up than was good for him, and this added to his annoyance. She considered this, sullenly. "I'm not exackly straight in my mind what I understand and what I don't understand, yet," she replied. "But I got this much straight: If I done what I done to please you, I done it to please me, too!" This was logical enough; it had even a note of common sense and justice. But her crude method of expressing it filled him with cold fury. The Champneys temper strained at the leash. "Ah!" said he, a dark flush staining his face, "ah! Then get this straight, too: you'll please me only _if_ you carry out your part of our contract. What! do you dream I would ruin my nephew's life for a self-willed, undisciplined minx? Nothing could be farther from my thoughts! Nancy, _I_ made you Mrs. Peter Champneys: you will qualify for the position--or lose it!" He tapped his foot on the floor, and glared at her. Nancy gave him glare for glare. "Yeah, you said it! You made me Mrs. Peter Champneys, and all I got to do is to do what I don't want to do, to hold down the job! What you askin' _him_ to do to please _me_? How's _he_ qualifyin'? Is he so much I'm nothin'? Because that's what he thinks! Oh, you needn't talk! I guess I got eyes, at least!"