As he passed the wire-woven windows of the dairy at the back of the house, he observed a maid within busily employed, in the absence of Miss Sowersoft, in devouring by stealth a piece of cheese.
Colin knocked at the door; but before the maid could swallow her mouthful, and wipe the signs thereof from her lips, so as to fit herself to let him in, an ill-tempered voice, which he instantly recognised as that of Miss Sowersoft, bawled out, “Sally!—why don't you go to the door?”
“Yes, 'um!” bellowed Sally, in return, as she rushed to the place of entrance, and threw the door back.
“Is Miss Sowersoft at home?” asked the boy.
“Oh, it's you, is it?” cried his mistress from an inner room. “Come in, come in, and don't keep that door open half an hour, while I am in a perspiration enough to drown anybody!”
Colin passed through the kitchen into the apartment from which the voice had proceeded, and there beheld Miss Sowersoft, with a huge stack of newly-washed linen before her, rolling away at a mangle, which occupied nearly one side of the room.
“Why did n't your mother send you at a more convenient time?” continued Miss Sowersoft, looking askance at Colin, with her remotest eye cast crosswise upon him most malignantly. “If she had had as much to do as I have had, ever since she kept house of her own, she would have known pretty well before now that folks don't like to be interrupted in the middle of their day's work with new servants coming to their places. But I suppose she's had nothing to do but to pamper you all her life. I can't attend to you now;—you see I 'm up to my neck in business of one sort or another.”
So saying, she fell to turning the mangle again with increased velocity; so that, had our hero even felt inclined to make an answer, his voice would have been utterly drowned by the noise.
In the mean time Colin stood in the middle of the floor, doubtful what step to take next, whether into a chair or out of the house; but, in the lack of other employment, he pulled his cap into divers fanciful forms, which had never entered into the head of its manufacturer, until at length a temporary cessation of his mistress's labours, during which an exchange of linen was made in the mangle, enabled him to ask, with some chance of being heard, whether he could not begin to do something.
“I 'll tell you what to do,” replied Miss Maria, “when I 've done myself,—if I ever shall have done; for I am more like a galley-slave than anything else. Nobody need sit with their hands in their pockets here, if their will is as good as their work. Go out and look about you;—there 's plenty of stables and places to get acquainted with before you 'll know where to fetch a thing from, if you are sent for it. And, if Palethorpe has finished his pipe and bottle, tell him I want to know what time he would like to have his tea ready.”