Lavinia knew nothing about this. All she wanted was to escape observation and she darted into the kitchen, Betty the cook receiving her with open mouth.
A narrow, ricketty staircase in a corner of the kitchen shut in by a door which a stranger would take for that of a cupboard led to the upper part of the house. Lavinia guessed as much. She darted to this door, flung it open and ran up the creaking stairs just as her mother, shaking with passion, entered and caught sight of her flying skirt.
"Good laux, mistress," Betty was beginning, but she could get no further. Mrs. Fenton jumped down her throat.
"Hold your silly tongue. Don't talk to me. I—the smelling salts! Quick, you slut, or I'll faint," screamed the lady.
No one could look less like fainting than did Mrs. Fenton, and so Betty thought, but she kept her thoughts to herself and fetched the restorer at which her mistress vigorously sniffed, after sinking, seemingly prostrate, into a chair. Then she fell to fanning her hot face with her apron, now and again relieving her feelings with language quite appropriate to the neighbourhood of the Old Bailey.
Meanwhile Hannah wisely kept aloof and only went to the kitchen when necessary to execute her customers' orders. Directly the fainting lady inside saw the waitress she revived.
"What's this about Lavinia? Tell me. Everything mind," she cried.
"What I don't know I can't tell, mistress. Ask her yourself," returned Hannah.
"Don't try to bamboozle me. You do know."
"I say I don't. I found her outside more dead than alive, and I brought her in. I wasn't going to let her be and all the scum of Newgate about."