“Lost it! Oh, Nora, don’t be stupid!” she cried furiously. “How could she lose it? She’s been nowhere. She’s been here all the time. And the dress was here, too, hanging in her closet, up to a week ago! How can you lose a dress?” she cried impatiently. “Is it just going to crawl off your back and walk away from you when you’re not looking?” she said sarcastically. “You know she didn’t lose it! Someone’s taken it!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Nora said with dutiful acquiescence. “That’s what I think, too. Someone must have sneaked in here when all of yez was out an’ taken it. Ah, I tell ye,” she remarked with a regretful movement of the head, “it’s got so nowadays ye never know who to trust and who not to,” she observed sententiously. “A friend of mine who works fer some big people up at Rye was tellin’ me just the other day about a man that came there wit’ some kind of a floor-mop he had to sell—ast to try it out an’ show ‘em how it worked upon their floors, ye know, an’ a finer, cleaner-lookin’ boy, she says, ye wouldn’t see again in yer whole lifetime. ‘An’ my God! she says—I’m tellin’ ye just the way she told it to me, Mrs. Jack—‘I couldn’t believe me own ears when they told me later what he’d done! If he’d been me own brother I couldn’t have been more surprised!’ she says.—Well, it just goes to show ye that----”
“Oh, Nora, for heaven’s sake!” Mrs. Jack cried with an angry and impatient gesture. “Don’t talk such rot to me! Who would come in here without your knowing it? You girls are here all day long, there’s only the elevator and the service entrance, and you see everyone who comes in! And besides, if anyone ever took the trouble to break in, you know he wouldn’t stop with just one dress. He’d be after money or jewellery or something valuable that he could sell.”
“Well, now, I tell ye,” Nora said, “that man was here last week to fix the refrigerator. I says to May at the time: ‘I don’t like the look of him,’ I says. ‘There’s somethin’ in his face that I don’t like. Keep yer eye on him,’ I says, ‘because----’”
“Nora!”
At the sharp warning in her mistress’s voice the maid stopped suddenly, looked quickly at her, and then was silent, with a dull flush of shame and truculence upon her face. Mrs. Jack stared back at her with a look of burning indignation, then she burst out with open, blazing anger.
“Look here!” Mrs. Jack cried furiously. “I think it’s a dirty shame the way you girls are acting! We’ve been good to you! Nora,” and now her voice grew gentler with pity, “there are no girls in this town who’ve been better treated than you have.”
“Don’t I know it, Mrs. Jack,” Nora answered in a lilting and earnest tone, but her eyes were sullenly hostile and resentful. “Haven’t I always said the same? Wasn’t I sayin’ the same thing meself to Janie just the other day? ‘Sure,’ I says, ‘but we’re the lucky ones! There’s no one in the world I’d rather work fer than Mrs. Jack. Twenty years,’ I says, ‘I’ve been here, an’ in all that time,’ I says, ‘I’ve never heard a cross word from her. They’re the best people in the world,’ I says, ‘an’ any girl that gets a job wit’ ‘em is lucky!’ Sure, don’t I know all of ye”—she cried richly—“Mr. Jack an’ Miss Edith an’ Miss Alma? Wouldn’t I get down on me knees right now an’ scrub me fingers to the bone if it would help ye any?”
“Who’s asking you to scrub your fingers to the bone?” Mrs. Jack cried impatiently. “Lord, Nora, you girls have it pretty soft. There’s mighty little scrubbing that you’ve had to do!” she said. “It’s the rest of us who scrub!” she cried. “We go out of here every morning—six days in the week—and work like hell----”
“Don’t I know it, Mrs. Jack?” Nora broke in. “Wasn’t I sayin’ to May just the other day----”
“Oh, damn what you said to May!” For a brief moment Mrs. Jack looked at the servant with a straight, burning face. Then she spoke more quietly to her. “Nora, listen to me,” she said. “We’ve always given you girls everything you ever asked for. You’ve had the best wages anyone can get for what you do. And you’ve lived here with us just the same as the rest of us, for you know very well that----”