"Who is that?" cried a voice irate.
It was the voice of the second cook, who was there supreme except when the chef was present. Mary stepped in, and the woman advanced to meet her.
"May I ask to what I am indebted for the honner of this unexpected visit?" said the second cook, whose head its overcharge of self-importance jerked hither and thither upon her neck, as she seized the opportunity of turning to her own use a sentence she had just read in the "Fireside Herald" which had taken her fancy—spoken by Lady Blanche Rivington Delaware to a detested lover disinclined to be dismissed.
"Would you please tell me where to find the second house-maid," said Mary. "Mrs. Perkin has sent me to her room."
"Why don't Mrs. Perkin show you the way, then?" returned the woman. "There ain't nobody else in the house as I knows on fit to send to the top o' them stairs with you. A nice way Jemim' 'ill be in when she comes 'ome, to find a stranger in her room!"
The same instant, however, the woman bethought herself that, if what she had said in her haste were reported, it would be as much as her place was worth; and at once thereupon she assumed a more complaisant tone. Casting a look at her saucepans, as if to warn them concerning their behavior in her absence, she turned again to Mary, saying:
"I believe I better show you the way myself. It's easier to take you than find a girl to do it. Them hussies is never where they oughto be! You follow me ."
She led the way along two passages, and up a back staircase of stone—up and up, till Mary, unused to such heights, began to be aware of knees. Plainly at last in the regions of the roof, she thought her hill Difficulty surmounted, but the cook turned a sharp corner, and Mary following found herself once more at the foot of a stair—very narrow and steep, leading up to one of those old-fashioned roof-turrets which had begun to appear in the new houses of that part of London.
"Are you taking me to the clouds, cook?" she said, willing to be cheerful, and to acknowledge her obligation for laborious guidance.
"Not yet a bit, I hope," answered the cook; "we'll get there soon enough, anyhow—excep' you belong to them peculiars as wants to be saints afore their time. If that's your sort, don't you come here; for a wickeder 'ouse, or an 'ouse as you got to work harder in o' Sundays, no one won't easily find in this here west end."