"Elsie," said Violet, peeping into the bathroom on her way upstairs. "Do you really need that geyser full on all the time?" She spoke with nervous exasperation.
"Well, 'm——"
"I don't know what your master will say when he sees the gas-bill that's come in this very moment. I really don't. I daren't show it him." She warningly produced the impeachment.
"Well, 'm, I must make the water hot."
"Yes, I know. But please do be as careful as you can."
"Well, 'm, I've nearly finished." And Elsie dramatically turned off the gas-tap of the geyser.
The gloomy bathroom was like a tropic, and the heat very damp. Linen hung sodden and heavy along the line. The panes of the open window were obscured by steam. The walls trickled with condensed steam. And Elsie's face and arms were like bedewed beetroot. But to Violet the excessive warmth was very pleasant.
"You didn't have any tea this morning," said she, for she had noticed that nobody had been into the kitchen before herself.
"No, 'm. It's no use. If I'm to get through with my work Monday mornings I can't waste my time getting my tea. And that's all about it, 'm."
Elsie, her brow puckered, seemed to be actually accusing her mistress of trying to tempt her from the path of virtue. The contract between employers and employed in that house had long since passed, so far as the employed was concerned, far beyond the plane of the commercial. The employers gave £20 a year; the employed gave all her existence, faculties, energy; and gave them with passion, without reserve open or secret, without reason, sublimely.