“Yes, I shall,” said Edward, who was tightening up again. “I sha’n’t have none unless you two join with me.”
“Well, if it comes to that,” said cook, “sooner than you should go without, I’ll have the least taste in the world.”
The housemaid shook her head as if despising such excuses; but ten minutes after, when a mug of the hot sweet-scented compound was placed before her by cook, who winked at Edward as she did so, the lady of the dustpan and brush condescended to simper, and say, “O, the very idee!” Then she smiled, and at the end of another ten minutes the trio were all smiling as they sat with their feet on the fender, Edward regaling himself and his fellow-servants with an account of what had taken place during the afternoon.
“I should say it was as near as could be three o’clock,” said Edward punctiliously; “it might have been a little after, though I hadn’t heard it strike, or it might have been a little before: I ain’t certain. Anyhow, it was as near as could be to three o’clock when the front-door bell rings.
“‘Visitor for Miss Bedford,’ I says to myself, laughing like, and meaning it as a joke; for as we’d had one that day, I didn’t of course expect no more.”
“What time was it as Sir Philip Vining went away?” said cook, who was deeply interested.
“O, that was before lunch,” said Edward.
“To be sure, so it was,” said the housemaid.
“Well, I slips on my coat—for I was dusting the glasses over before going to lay the dinner-cloth—and up I goes.”
“And up you goes,” said cook; for Edward had paused to soften his hard face with a little more of the stewpan decoction.