Nevertheless, since by long practice she was courageous, she meant to
execute the scheme. And she began by knocking at the door. Although
Rachel had seriously warned her that for a domestic servant to
knock at the parlour door was a grave sin, she simply could not help
knocking. Not to knock seemed to her wantonly sacrilegious. Thus she
knocked, and a voice told her to come in.
There was the superior being, his back to the fire and his legs
apart--formidable!
She curtsied--another sin according to the new code. Then she
discovered that she was inarticulate.
"Well?"
Words burst from her--
"Her's crying her eyes out up yon, mester."
And Mrs. Tams also snivelled.
The superior being frowned and said testily, yet not without a touch
of careless toleration--
"Oh, get away, you silly old fool of a woman!"
Mrs. Tarns got away, not entirely ill-content.
In the lobby she heard an unusual rapping on the glass of the front
door, and sharply opened it to inform the late disturber that there
existed a bell and a knocker for respectable people. A shabby youth
gave her a note for "Louis Fores, Esq.," and said that there was an
answer. So that she was forced to renew the enterprise of entering the
throne-room.
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