Then it was that a horrid thing happened to Loveday.
"What do I care for you and your spring-cleaning?" she stormed, "you and it can go up the chimney together for all I care. I only wanted you to give me work so as to get my satin sash, and I'll never come near you or church again as long as I do live. That I won't...." And Loveday turned and ran out of the front door, beneath the grinning fox, and not only ran out of the front door, but banged it behind her.
Maids in the kitchen heard that unseemly sound, as they had heard, awe-struck, the raised voice, and Mrs. Veale felt she must read them a short but fitting lesson on the dire results of wanting things beyond one's station. The stout cook and the crisp housemaid soon knew of Loveday's presumptuous ambition, a knowledge they shared now with the Lear family and Cherry Cotton, and that soon was to spread to the accompaniment of many a titter about the twisted ways of the village.
CHAPTER VIII: IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE
Chapter VIII
IN WHICH LOVEDAY CONTINUES HER QUEST AND ACHIEVES TENPENCE
Loveday ran down the path to the Vicarage gate so fast that the tears she had not been able to restrain blew off her cheeks as she went. Thus it came about that she did not see Miss Letitia until she had all but knocked her down in the urgency of her flight.
Letitia Veale was no sylph such as Miss Le Pettit, however, and she caught hold of Loveday like the good-natured, rather romping, young lady that she was. Mrs. Veale always said of her that she would "fine down," but persons less well disposed to her than her own mother, and who were the mothers of daughters themselves, said that Letitia Veale was a sad hoyden. She had ever a merry nod or word for Loveday, and dazed with anger as that ill-balanced maid was, Letitia's smile won her to comparative calm again, though it was a calm with which cunning intermingled. For:—
"Oh, miss," cried Loveday, "I do beg your pardon ..." Then, seeing by the young lady's pleasant face that she had not offended by her clumsiness—"but I was so sick with misery I didn't rightly see where I was going."