It's My Opinion That What They Think We Belong In Is A Lordly House, Where You'd Shine Most As Head Butler Or A Steward, While I'd Be The Housekeeper Or A Leading Lady's Maid."

"By George!" said Jone, getting up from the table, "if any of those fellows would favor me with an opinion like that I'd break his head."

"You'd have a lot of heads to break," said I, "if you went through this country asking for opinions on the subject. It's all very well for us to remember that we've got a house of our own as good as most rectors have over here, and money enough to hire a minor canon, if we needed one in the house; but the people over here don't know that, and it wouldn't make much difference if they did, for it wouldn't matter how nice we lived or what we had so long as they knew we was retired servants."

At this Jone just blazed up and rammed his hands into his pockets and spread his feet wide upon the floor. "Pomona," said he, "I don't mind it in you, but if anybody else was to call me a retired servant I'd - "

"Hold up, Jone," said I, "don't waste good, wholesome anger." Now, I tell you, madam, it really did me good to see Jone blaze up and get red in the face, and I am sure that if he'd get his blood boiling oftener it would be a good thing for his dyspeptic tendencies and what little malaria may be left in his system. "It won't do any good to flare up here," I went on to say to him; "fact's fact, and we was servants, and good ones, too, though I say it myself, and the trouble is we haven't got into the way of altogether forgetting it, or, at least, acting as if we had forgotten it."

Jone sat down on a chair. "It might help matters a little," he said, "if I knew what you was driving at."

"I mean just this," said I, "as long as we are as anxious not to give trouble, or as careful of people's feelings, as good-mannered to servants, and as polite and good-natured to everybody we have anything to do with, as we both have been since we came here, and as it is our nature to be, I am proud to say, we're bound to be set down, at least by the general run of people over here, as belonging to the pick of the nobility and gentry, or as well-bred servants. It's only those two classes that act as we do, and anybody can see we are not special nobles and gents. Now, if we want to be reckoned anywhere in between these two we've got to change our manners."

"Will you kindly mention just how?" said Jone.

"Yes," said I, "I will. In the first place, we've got to act as if we had always been waited on and had never been satisfied with the way it was done; we've got to let people think that we think we are a good deal better than they are, and what they think about it doesn't make the least difference; and then again we've got to live in better quarters than these, and whatever they may be we must make people think that we don't think they are quite good enough for us.

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