"I told you I always hear it," said Mary Ann, hesitating and blushing delicately before the critical word.
"Oh, well, run along then. Stop a moment—I must give you another kiss for talking so nicely. There! And—stop a moment—bring me up some coffee, please, when the ground floor is satisfied."
"Eessir—I mean yessir. What must I say?" she added, pausing troubled on the threshold.
"Say, 'Yes, Lancelot,'" he answered recklessly.
"Yessir," and Mary Ann disappeared.
It was ten endless minutes before she reappeared with the coffee. The whole of the second five minutes Lancelot paced his room feverishly, cursing the ground floor, and stamping as if to bring down its ceiling. He was curious to know more of Mary Ann's history.
But it proved meagre enough. Her mother died when Mary Ann was a child; her father when she was still a mere girl. His affairs were found in hopeless confusion, and Mary Ann was considered lucky to be taken into the house of the well-to-do Mrs. Leadbatter, of London, the elder sister of a young woman who had nursed the vicar's wife. Mrs. Leadbatter had promised the vicar to train up the girl in the way a domestic should go.
"And when I am old enough she is going to pay me wages as well," concluded Mary Ann, with an air of importance.
"Indeed—how old were you when you left the village?"
"Fourteen."