“I don’t say as I wouldn’t like to go back on a visit, though I expect I’d find many changes.
But my family didn’t like the idea of me marrying a foreigner and I ’aven’t spoken to them since.
Of course there are many things here that are not the same as what they ’ave at ’ome, but it’s surprising what you get used to.
I see a lot of life. I don’t know as I should care to live the ’umdrum life they do in a place like London.”
I smiled.
For what she said was strangely incongruous with her manner.
She was a pattern of decorum.
It was extraordinary that she could have lived for thirty years in this wild, and almost barbaric, country without its having touched her.
Though I knew no Turkish and she spoke it with ease I was convinced that she spoke it most incorrectly and with a cockney accent.
I suppose she had remained the precise, prim English lady’s maid, knowing her place, through all these vicissitudes because she had no faculty of surprise.
She took everything that came as a matter of course.
She looked upon everyone who wasn’t English as a foreigner and therefore as someone, almost imbecile, for whom allowances must be made.
She ruled her staff despotically—for did she not know how an upper servant in a great house should exercise his authority over the under servants?—and everything about the hotel was clean and neat.
“I do my best,” she said, when I congratulated her on this, standing, as always when she spoke to me, with her hands respectfully crossed.
“Of course one can’t expect foreigners to ’ave the same ideas as we ’ave, but as his lordship used to say to me, what we’ve got to do, Parker, he said to me, what we’ve got to do in this life is to make the best of our raw material.”
But she kept her greatest surprise for the eve of my departure.
“I’m glad you’re not going before you’ve seen my two sons, sir.”
“I didn’t know you had any.”
“They’ve been away on business, but they’ve just come back.
You’ll be surprised when you’ve seen them.
I’ve trained them with me own ’ands so to speak, and when I’m gone they’ll carry on the ’otel between them.”
In a moment two tall, swarthy, strapping young fellows entered the hall.
Her eyes lit up with pleasure.
They went up to her and took her in their arms and gave her resounding kisses.
“They don’t speak English, sir, but they understand a little, and of course they speak Turkish like natives, and Greek and Italian.”
I shook hands with the pair and then Signora Niccolini said something to them and they went away.
“They’re handsome fellows, signora,” I said.
“You must be very proud of them.”
“I am, sir, and they’re good boys, both of them. They’ve never give me a moment’s trouble from the day they was born and they’re the very image of Signor Niccolini.”
“I must say no one would think they had an English mother.”
“I’m not exactly their mother, sir.
I’ve just sent them along to say ’ow do you do to ’er.”
I dare say I looked a little confused.
“They’re the sons that Signor Niccolini ’ad by a Greek girl that used to work in the ’otel, and ’aving no children of me own I adopted them."
I sought for some remark to make.
”I ’ope you don’t think there’s any blame attaches to Signor Niccolini,” she said, drawing herself up a little.
“I shouldn’t like you to think that, sir.”
She folded her hands again and with a mixture of pride, primness and satisfaction added the final word: “Signor Niccolini was a very full-blooded man.”