Pastor Lahmann stepped back.
Miriam was pleased at the thought of being grouped with him in the eyes of Fräulein Pfaff. As she took her glasses from his outstretched hand she felt that Fräulein would recognise that they had established a kind of friendliness. She halted for a moment at the door, adjusting her glasses, amiably uncertain, feeling for something to say.
Pastor Lahmann was standing in the middle of the room examining his nails. Fräulein, at the window, was twitching a curtain into place. She turned and drove Miriam from the room with speechless waiting eyes.
The sunlight was streaming across the hall. It seemed gay and home-like. Pastor Lahmann had made her forget she was a governess. He had treated her as a girl. Fräulein’s eyes had spoiled it. Fräulein was angry about it for some extraordinary reason.
CHAPTER VII
“Don’t let her do it, Miss Henderson.”
Fräulein Pfaff’s words broke the silence accompanying the servant’s progress from Gertrude whose soup-plate she had first seized, to Miriam more than half-way down the table.
Startled into observation Miriam saw the soup-spoon of her neighbour whisked, dripping, from its plate to the uppermost of Marie’s pile and Emma shrinking back with a horrified face against Jimmie who was leaning forward entranced with watching.... The whole table was watching. Marie, having secured Emma’s plate to the base of her pile clutched Miriam’s spoon. Miriam moved sideways as the spoon swept up, saw the desperate hard, lean face bend towards her for a moment as her plate was seized, heard an exclamation of annoyance from Fräulein and little sounds from all round the table. Marie had passed on to Clara. Clara received her with plate and spoon held firmly together and motioned her before she would relinquish them, to place her load upon the shelf of the lift.
Miriam felt she was in disgrace with the whole table.... She sat, flaring, rapidly framing phrase after phrase for the lips of her judges ... “slow and awkward” ... “never has her wits about her....”
“Don’t let her do it, Miss Henderson....” Why should Fräulein fix upon her to teach her common servants? Struggling through her resentment was pride in the fact that she did not know how to handle soup-plates. Presently she sat refusing absolutely to accept the judgment silently assailing her on all hands.