From the doorway Thrimby coughed with extreme deliberation. "I beg your pardon, madam, but I thought Miss Cynthia was here. Lord Guisborough wishes to speak to her on the telephone."
Beulah glared at him, her full lip caught between her teeth. Mrs. Haddington said coolly: "Here is the cheque, Miss Birtley. You will pay the bills tomorrow morning, if you please, before you come to work. Kindly go down to Mrs. Foston and find out from her what shopping has to be done today! Miss Cynthia is resting, Thrimby, I will speak to Lord Guisborough."
Thrimby, recounting this interesting passage later to his colleague, the housekeeper, said impressively: "Mark my words, Mrs. Foston, there's more to that young woman than meets the eye! Well, I've always had my suspicions, right from the start!"
"Well," said Mrs. Foston, who was as goodhumoured as she was stout, "be that as it may, I'm downright sorry for the girl, and that's a fact, Mr.. Thrimby! I've never had any words with her, but, then, Do as you would be done by, is my motto! I shall stay here till the end of the Season, because that's what I promised Mrs. H., but not another moment! Well, it isn't what I've been accustomed to, and that's the truth! Only, in these days, with the best people cutting down their staffs -" She stopped, and sighed. "Well, you know what it is, Mr.. Thrimby!"
"I know," he agreed, echoing her sigh. "Sometimes one wonders what the world is coming to!"
"All this talk about the Workers!" said Mrs. Foston, shaking out a tea-cloth, subjecting it to a minute inspection, and refolding it. "Anyone 'ud think the only people to do a job of work was in factories, or dockyards, or plate-laying! No one bothers about people like you and me, and my brother, who's doing a jobbinggardener's work, because no one can't afford to keep a head-gardener like him, that was always used to have four under him! It makes me tired, Mr.. Thrimby!"
"Ah, well, it's Progress, Mrs. Foston!" said the butler vaguely.
"Yes, and I suppose it's progress that makes any little chit that hasn't had any more training than that canary of mine waltz in here asking as much money as a decent housemaid that's worked her way up from betweenmaid!" said Mrs. Foston tartly. "Something for nothing! That's what people want nowadays. And it's what they get, too, more's the pity! I've no patience with it!"
At this point, Thrimby, well-knowing that his colleague was fairly mounted upon her favourite hobbyhorse, thought it prudent to withdraw, so that Mrs. Foston was left to address the rest of her pithy monologue to the ambient air.
With the exception of Mrs. Foston, who stated that she preferred to say nothing; and of M. Gaston, the chef, who professed a sublime indifference to anything that occurred beyond the confines of the realm over which he reigned, Mrs. Haddington's servants were at one in declaring that murders were not what they had been accustomed to, or could put up with. The head housemaid, recruiting her strength with a cup of Bovril, informed her subordinate, who had brought this sustaining beverage up to her sick-bed, that strangled corpses were not what she would call nice; and the parlourmaid, tendering her notice to her employer, said that Mr.. Seaton-Carew's murder had unsettled her. The kitchenmaid, who was an orphan, said that her auntie didn't want her to stay no longer in a house where there were such unnatural goings-on; and would no doubt have followed the parlourmaid's example had she not been too much frightened of M. Gaston to give notice without his consent. This, since she was the least stupid scullion who had been allotted to him, was withheld, M. Gaston maintaining with Gallic fervour that what took place abovestairs was no concern of his or hers. Margie, a biddable girl, was quite cowed by his eloquence; and the rest of the staff, while deprecating the laxity of M. Gaston's outlook, said that anyone had to remember that he was French.