"What a bother, to be sure!" exclaimed Miriam. "Some of our folks are going out to tea, and so I can get away earlier. I do think it is a shame that poor servants can be muddled about as we are, we ought to be able to claim our own time and stick to it. Half-past five is your time, I know. That was why I said a quarter to six, for I thought you could walk round to my place in that time, and it would be nice to talk over things again before we go in to my cousin's."
Fanny shook her head. "I don't believe I can get away so early as that," she said. "I shall have a scramble to get away before six."
She did not say a word about meeting her father, for she did not want Miriam to see him. He looked just what he was, a respectable working-man; but Miriam's cousin and her husband were very genteel people, and would be sure to look down upon people like her father.
Fanny was very fond of him, she thought, and would guard him and herself from hearing disparaging remarks passed upon his manners and his clothes. But she did not consider the pain she would cause him by keeping him waiting, while she went about this other business.
She quite intended to see him after her visit to Mrs. Scott, but she could not afford to wait much longer for her new dress, because Miriam had noticed that her present one was shabby and short, and Miriam always looked so nice, that Fanny was almost ashamed to be seen out with her.
Miriam pressed again that she should insist upon coming out at her promised usual time, and Fanny gave a sort of half promise to do this, although she feared it would not be of much use. Still, the thought that she was being hardly dealt with easily found a lodgment in her present frame of mind, and she went home feeling she had a grievance against her mistress for having company to tea on Sunday.
The old-fashioned practice of Saturday cooking prevailed in Mrs. Lloyd's small household, so that Sunday was a very quiet day, and Fanny had very little to do beyond setting and clearing away meals; so on this particular Sunday Fanny had time to think over what Miriam had said about servants having a right to keep to their own time, until she had worked herself up to a state of surprising dissatisfaction, and Mrs. Lloyd, looking at her gloomy, sullen face, wondered what could have happened to upset her while she was at church in the morning.
"Did any one come while I was out this morning?" she said, at last.
"No," answered Fanny, in an insolent tone.
"I think you are forgetting who you are speaking to," said the lady, reprovingly.