"Don't dare to stop," he said. "It is the best sense!"
"Well, I believe it is sense. Certainly a careless, slovenly, unappreciative mistress makes her servants like her; it is certain that the converse holds. It will hold, you may be sure, with regard to your farmer-tenants; they will see perfection in all that surrounds you, and they will tend to imitate. For imitation is the most natural and primal instinct of all, though it may happen to be flattery. Even so it is sincere, according to the proverb. So far, of course, it is easy; your servants naturally follow you. And the plate-man will clean the plate better, and will look out for other perfections, and the chef will cook better, and find that his concertina—or whatever chefs play—is not up to the mark. That is it again! You want your dependents to feel that they are not up to the mark. As I say, that is easily done with those who surround you, who come in contact with you."
Lucia was quite genuine in all that she had said, and it would be an injustice to assume that she had said this with a personal purpose. He had taken it, too, in the genuine spirit, though if Aunt Cathie had said exactly the same things in the same words, he might not have cared so much about her enunciations. Then, however, having led the conversation away when she could have made it personal, Lucia brought it swiftly back again. She only wanted a few personal words, and those only distantly personal, but it was necessary to have them now, since the handkerchief which Aunt Cathie had put over her head when she went to look at the broad-beans was bobbing nearer.
"Of course, it is more difficult with regard to your dependents here, the tenants in your houses," she said, "since"—and the phrase was intentionally sarcastic—"since you hope to benefit us also"
He had to put in a disclaimer, which was exactly what Lucia meant him to do. It brought him back to thinking about her and himself.
"Hope to benefit," he exclaimed; "you make me out" He probably would have used the word "prig," but she interrupted.
"I make you out a benefactor," she said. "That is what you have got to be. You have all, absolutely all, that can make life lovely, and you must use it not only for your servants, but for us, please—us, the inhabitants of this very, very provincial town. Ah, by the way, I said I would give you a proof of how servants direct dependents, are influenced. It is just this. There is a
