Without saying anything Elsie went downstairs into the shadowy shop. A dozen or so letters lay on the floor. "I'll give him two or three to quiet him," she thought, counting him now as a baby. She picked up three envelopes at random. "He'd better not have them all," she thought. The others she left lying. She had no concern whatever as to the possible business importance of any of the correspondence. Her sole concern, apart from the sick-room, was the condition of the shop. Ought she to clean it, or ought she to "let it go"? She wanted to clean it, because it was obviously fast returning to its original state of filth. On the other hand, while cleaning it she might be neglecting her master. None but herself had the power to decide which course should be taken. She perceived that she was mistress. Naïvely she enjoyed the strange sensation of authority, but the responsibility of authority dismayed her.
"Are these all?" Mr. Earlforward asked indifferently, as she put the three letters into his limp, shiny hand.
"Yes, sir," she said without compunction.
He allowed the letters to slip out of his hand on to the eiderdown. She was just a little afraid of being alone with him.
II
THE REFUSAL
In the early dusk of the afternoon, about four o'clock, there was a banging on the shop-door, and the short bark of a dog, who evidently considered himself entitled to help in whatever affair was afoot. Elsie was upstairs. During the morning several persons, incapable of understanding that when a shop is shut it is shut, had banged on the door, and at last Elsie, by means of two tin tacks, had affixed to the door—without a word to her master—a dirty old card on which she had scrawled in large pencilled letters the succinct announcement, "Closed." This had put an end to banging. But now more banging!
"The doctor!" Elsie exclaimed, and ran down.