“Why did you not send down to my mother?” said he, speaking hardly above a whisper, as they stood together in the hall.
“He would not let me.”
“But why not go yourself? or why not have written to me,—considering how intimate we are?”
Mrs. Robarts could not explain to him that the peculiar intimacy between him and Lucy must have hindered her from doing so, even if otherwise it might have been possible; but she felt such was the case.
“Well, my men, this is bad work you’re doing here,” said he, walking into the drawing-room. Whereupon the cook curtseyed low, and the bailiffs, knowing his lordship, stopped from their business and put their hands to their foreheads. “You must stop this, if you please,—at once. Come, let’s go out into the kitchen, or some place outside. I don’t like to see you here with your big boots and the pen and ink among the furniture.”
“We ain’t a-done no harm, my lord, so please your lordship,” said Jemima cook.
“And we is only a-doing our bounden dooties,” said one of the bailiffs.
“As we is sworn to do, so please your lordship,” said the other.
“And is wery sorry to be unconwenient, my lord, to any gen’leman or lady as is a gen’leman or lady. But accidents will happen, and then what can the likes of us do?” said the first.
“Because we is sworn, my lord,” said the second. But, nevertheless, in spite of their oaths, and in spite also of the stern necessity which they pleaded, they ceased their operations at the instance of the peer. For the name of a lord is still great in England.