She felt a little as Pearson had felt when confronting his new employer’s entire cheerfulness in face of a situation as exotically hopeless as the tweed cutaway, and nothing else by way of resource. But there was something so nice about him, something which was almost as though he was actually a gentleman, something which absolutely, if one could go so far, stood in the place of his being a gentleman. It was impossible to help liking him more and more at every queer speech he made. Still, there were of course things he did not realize, and perhaps one ought in kindness to give him a delicate hint.
“I’m afraid,” she began quite apologetically. “I’m afraid that the servants, Burrill and the footmen, you know, will be--will think--”
“Say,” he took her up, “let’s give Burrill and the footmen the Willies out and out. If they can’t stand it, they can write home to their mothers and tell ’em they’ve got to take ’em away. Burrill and the footmen needn’t worry. They’re suitable enough, and it’s none of their funeral, anyhow.”
He wasn’t upset in the least. Miss Alicia, who, as a timid dependent either upon “poor dear papa” or Mr. Temple Barholm, had been secretly, in her sensitive, ladylike little way, afraid of superior servants all her life, knowing that they realized her utterly insignificant helplessness, and resented giving her attention because she was not able to show her appreciation of their services in the proper manner--Miss Alicia saw that it had not occurred to him to endeavor to propitiate them in the least, because somehow it all seemed a joke to him, and he didn’t care. After the first moment of being startled, she regarded him with a novel feeling, almost a kind of admiration. Tentatively she dared to wonder if there was not something even rather--rather _aristocratic_ in his utter indifference.
If he had been a duke, he would not have regarded the servants’ point of view; it wouldn’t have mattered what they thought. Perhaps, she hastily decided, he was like this because, though he was not a duke, and boot-blacking in New York notwithstanding, he was a Temple Barholm. There were few dukes as old of blood as a Temple Barholm. That must be it. She was relieved.