The cook stopped stirring the saucepan, and the kitchenmaid stood listening greedily.
“Nothing of the kind,” Sally answered defiantly. “You're always trying to get up something against me. Cook, will you keep back the dinner twenty minutes?”
“Cook, I forbid you. I'm mistress here.”
“How dare you insult me before the servants! Grace is mistress here, if it comes to that.”
“Grace has given me over the housekeeping. I am mistress when she is too unwell to attend to it.”
“Nothing of the sort. Grace is the eldest, I would give way to her, but I'm not going to give way to you. Cook, the dinner won't be ready for another half hour, will it?”
“I don't know when the dinner will be ready, and I don't care.”
“It is a quarter to seven now, dinner won't be ready before seven, will it, cook? Keep it back a bit. Now I must be off.”
And, as Maggie expected, Sally ran past the glass houses and the pear and apple trees, for there was at the end of the vegetable garden a door in the brick wall that enclosed the manor house. It was used by the gardeners, and it communicated with a path leading through some corn and grass land to the high road. There were five acres of land attached to the manor house, tennis lawn, shady walks, flower garden, kitchen garden, stables, and coach house at the back, and all this spoke in somewhat glaring fashion the wealth and ease of a rich city merchant.
“There she goes,” thought Maggie, flaunting her head. “What a fool she is to bully father instead of humouring him. We shall never hear the end of this. His dinner put back so that she may continue her flirtation with Meason! I shall have to tell the truth. Why should I tell a lie?”