"I think I can," she said.
She raised the tablecloth at the end, discovered the knob of a drawer, and opened it. And, surely, there were teaspoons.
"Can't I just take a peep into the scullery?" she begged, with a bewitching supplication. "I won't stop. It's nearly time your servant was back, if she's always so dreadfully prompt as you say. I won't touch anything. Servants are so silly. They always think one wants to interfere with them."
Without waiting for James's permission, she burst youthfully into the scullery.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "there's some one here!"
Of course there was. There was Mrs. Butt.
Although the part played by Mrs. Butt in the drama was vehement and momentous, it was nevertheless so brief that a description of Mrs. Butt is hardly called for. Suffice it to say that she had so much waist as to have no waist, and that she possessed both a beard and a moustache. This curt catalogue of her charms is unfair to her; but Mrs. Butt was ever the victim of unfairness.
James Ollerenshaw looked audaciously in at the door. "It's Mrs. Butt," said he. "Us thought as ye were out."
"Good-afternoon, Mrs. Butt," Helen began, with candid pleasantness.
A pause.