Neither Sarah nor Grover made any remark, and in silence the servants went to their rooms. Margaret closed the door and turned to look at Esther, who had fallen on the chair, her eyes fixed in vacancy.
"I know what it is; I was the same when Jim Story got the sack. It seems as if one couldn't live through it, and yet one does somehow."
"I wonder if they'll marry."
"Most probable. She has a lot of money."
Two days after a cab stood in the yard in front of the kitchen window. Peggy's luggage was being piled upon it—two large, handsome basket boxes with the initials painted on them. Kneeling on the box-seat, the coachman leaned over the roof making room for another—a small box covered with red cowhide and tied with a rough rope. The little box in its poor simplicity brought William back to Esther, whelming her for a moment in so acute a sense of her loss that she had to leave the kitchen. She went into the scullery, drew the door after her, sat down, and hid her face in her apron. A stifled sob or two, and then she recovered her habitual gravity of expression, and continued her work as if nothing had happened.
XII
"They are just crazy about it upstairs. Ginger and the Gaffer are the worst. They say they had better sell the place and build another house somewhere else. None of the county people will call on them now—and just as they were beginning to get on so well! Miss Mary, too, is terrible cut up about it; she says it will interfere with her prospects, and that Ginger has nothing to do now but to marry the kitchen-maid to complete the ruin of the Barfields."
"Miss Mary is far too kind to say anything to wound another's feelings. It is only a nasty old deceitful thing like yourself who could think of such a thing."
"Eh, you got it there, my lady," said Sarah, who had had a difference with
Grover, and was anxious to avenge it.
Grover looked at Sarah in astonishment, and her look clearly said, "Is everyone going to side with that little kitchen-maid?"