“That is my Lord Wilmot,” he said; “an old friend of the Colonel.”
Jenny would have liked to ask a dozen questions, but she did not dare. She already expected a scolding from Millicent, and received it before an hour was over.
“How dare you, Jane Lavender,” demanded Jenny’s superior officer, “let your voice be heard at the Colonel’s table?”
“If you please, Mrs Millicent,” answered Jenny, who was rather frightened, “I think only Mr Wright heard it.”
“You think! Pray, what business have you to think? Mrs Jane does not pay you for thinking, I’m sure.”
Jenny was too much cowed to say what she thought—that Mrs Jane did not pay her extra to hold her tongue. She only ventured on a timid suggestion that “they talked at the lower table.”
“Don’t quote the lower table to me, you vulgar girl! You deserve to be there, for your manners are not fit for the upper. Everybody knows the lower table is only for the household”—a word which then meant the servants—“but those who sit at the upper, and belong to the family, must hold their tongues. If we did not, strangers might take us for the gentlewomen.”
Jenny silently and earnestly wished they would.
“Now then, go into the parlour and behave yourself!” was the concluding order from Millicent.
Poor Jenny escaped into the parlour, with a longing wish in her heart for the old farmhouse kitchen, where nobody thought of putting a lock upon her lips. She felt she was buying her dignities very dear.