Hope Wayne shook her head thoughtfully.
“No,” she said, “I see no way. I can only be ready to befriend him if the chance offers.”
They said no more of him then, but Hope persuaded Fanny to come to Lawrence Newt’s Christmas dinner, to which they had all been bidden. “And I will make him understand about it,” she said, as she went down the steps.
Mrs. Dinks sat upon the door-step for some time. There was nobody to see her whom she knew, and if there had been she would not have cared. She did not know how long she had been sitting there, for she was thinking of other things, but she was roused by hearing her husband’s voice:
“Well, by G——! that’s a G—— d—— pretty business—squatting on a door-step like a servant girl! Come in, I tell you, and shut the door.”
From long habit Fanny did not pay the least attention to this order. But after some time she rose and closed the door, and clattered along the entry and up stairs, upon the worn and ragged carpet. Mr. Alfred Dinks returned to the parlor, pulled the bell violently, and when the sloppy servant girl appeared, glaring at him with the staring eyes, he immediately damned them, and wanted to know why in h—— he was kept waiting for his boots. The staring eyes vanished, and Mr. Dinks reclined upon the sofa, picking his teeth. Presently there was the slop—slop—slop of the girl along the entry. She opened the door, dropped the boots, and fled. Mr. Dinks immediately pulled the bell violently, walking across the room a greater distance than to his boots. Slop—slop again. The door opened.
“Look here! If you don’t bring me my boots, I’ll come and pull the hair out of your head!” roared the master of the house.
The cowering little creature dashed at the boots with a wobegone look, and brought them to the sofa. Mr. Dinks took them in his hand, and turned them round contemptuously.
“G——! You call those boots blacked?”
He scratched his head a moment, enjoying the undisguised terror of the puny girl.