Sophia murmured something inarticulate, staying till assured that Amy really was coming, and then she passed back into Cyril’s bedroom. She waited there, hesitant, not exactly on the watch, not exactly unwilling to assist at an interview between Amy and Amy’s mistress; indeed, she could not have surely analyzed her motive for remaining in Cyril’s bedroom, with the door ajar between that room and Constance’s.
Amy reluctantly mounted the stairs and went into her mistress’s bedroom with her chin in the air. She thought that Sophia had gone up to the second storey, where she ‘belonged.’ She stood in silence by the bed, showing no sympathy with Constance, no curiosity as to the indisposition. She objected to Constance’s attack of sciatica, as being a too permanent reproof of her carelessness as to doors.
Constance also waited, for the fraction of a second, as if expectant.
“Well, Amy,” she said at length in her voice weakened by fatigue and pain. “The letters?”
“There ain’t no letters,” said Amy, grimly. “You might have known, if there’d been any, I should have brought ’em up. Postman went past twenty minutes agone. I’m always being interrupted, and it isn’t as if I hadn’t got enough to do—now!”
She turned to leave, and was pulling the door open.
“Amy!” said a voice sharply. It was Sophia’s.
The servant jumped, and in spite of herself obeyed the implicit, imperious command to stop.
“You will please not speak to your mistress in that tone, at any rate while I’m here,” said Sophia, icily. “You know she is ill and weak. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“I never——” Amy began.