She smote at the door. Carinthia nodded from her window. Close upon that, Kit Ines came bounding to the parlour window; he spied and stared. Gower was known to him as the earl’s paymaster; so he went to the passage and flung the door open, blocking the way.
‘Any commands, your honour?’
‘You bring the countess to my lord immediately,’ said Gower.
Kit swallowed his mouthful of surprise in a second look at Madge and the ploughed garden-bed beneath the chamber window.
‘Are the orders written, sir?’
‘To me?—for me to deliver to you?—for you to do my lord’s bidding? Where’s your head?’
Kit’s finger-nails travelled up to it. Madge pushed past him. She and her mistress, and Kit’s mate, and the old woman receiving the word for a cup of tea, were soon in the passage. Kit’s mate had a ready obedience for his pay, nothing else,—no counsel at all, not a suggestion to a head knocked to a pudding by Madge’s jump and my lord’s paymaster here upon the scene.
‘My lady was to go down Wales way, sir.’
‘That may be ordered after.’
‘I ‘m to take my lady to my lord?’ and, ‘Does it mean my lady wants a fly?’ Kit asked, and harked back on whether Madge had seen my lord.