Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

It had a chimney-piece with white wax flowers on it, and a picture of a sailor in a frame, that I supposed was Master Stiles, gone off to Sea; and another picture, of an angel, done entirely in black hair, that I presumed was Mr Stiles, gone off to Glory. She sat and watched me take my supper. It was mutton, minced, and bread-and-butter; and you may imagine that, being so hungry as I was, I made very short work of it. As I ate, there came the slow chiming of the clock that I had heard before, sounding half-past nine. I said,
    'Does the clock chime all night?'
    Mrs Stiles nodded. 'All night, and all day, at the hour and the half. Mr Lilly likes his days run very regular. You'll find that out.'
    'And Miss Lilly?' I said, picking crumbs from the corner of my mouth. 'What does she like?'
    She smoothed her apron. 'Miss Maud likes what her uncle likes,' she answered.
    Then she rearranged her lips. She said,
    'You'll know, Miss Smith, that Miss Maud is quite a young girl, for all that she's mistress of this great house. The servants don't trouble her, for the servants answer to me. I should have said I had been a housekeeper long enough to know how to secure a maid for my own mistress—but there, even a housekeeper must do as she is bid, and Miss Maud've gone quite over my head in this matter. Quite over my head. I shouldn't have thought that perfectly wise, in a girl of her years; but we shall see how it turns out.'
    I said, 'I am sure whatever Miss Lilly does must turn out well.'
    She said, 'I have a great staff of servants, to make sure that it does. This is a well-kept house, Miss Smith, and I hope you will take to it. I don't know what you might be used to in your last place. I don't know what might be con-sidered a lady's maid's duties, in London. I have never been there'—she had never been to London!—'so cannot say. But if you mind my other girls, then I am sure they will mind you. The men and the stable-boys, of course, I hope I shall never see you talking with more than you can help…'
    She went on like that for a quarter of an hour—all the time, as I have mentioned, never quite catching my eye. She told me where I might walk in the house, and where I must take my meals, and how much sugar I should be allowed for my own use, and how much beer, and when I could expect my underclothes laundered. The tea that was boiled in Miss Maud's teapot, she said, it had been the habit of the last lady's maid to pass on to the girls in the kitchen. Likewise the wax-ends from Miss Maud's candle-sticks: they were to be given to Mr Way. And Mr Way would know how many wax-ends to expect, since it was him who doled out the candles. Corks went to Charles, the knife-boy. Bones and skins went to Cook.
    'The pieces of soap that Miss Maud leaves in her wash-stand, however,' she said, 'as being too dry to raise a lather from: those you may keep.'
    Well, that's servants for you—always grubbing over their own little patch. As if I cared, about candle-ends and soap! If I had never quite felt it before, I knew then what it was, to be in expectations of three thousand pounds.
    Then she said that if I had finished my supper she would be pleased to show me to my room. But she would have to ask me to be very quiet as we went, for Mr Lilly liked a silent house and couldn't bear upset, and Miss Maud had a set of nerves that were just like his, that wouldn't allow of her being kept from her rest or made fretful.
    So she said; and then she took up her lamp, and I took up my candle, and she led me out into the passage and up a dark staircase. 'This is the servants' way,' she said as we walked, 'that you must always take, unless Miss Maud directs you otherwise.'
    Her voice and her tread grew softer the higher we went. At last, when we had climbed three pairs of stairs, she took me to a door, that she said in a whisper was the door to my room. Putting her finger before her lips, she slowly turned the handle.
    I had never had a room of my own before. I did