But the kettle suddenly boiled over, so she filled the glass and the cups, and hurried off with the tray, her head still so full of her own engrossing thoughts that she did not become aware that visitors were present until she was well inside the room.
"Oh, Caroline, you can just put the tray down on the round table," said Miss Ethel, high and cool. It was plain that she thought the hour very late, and that Caroline's red cheeks, disordered hair and hat rakishly on one side did not please her.
Caroline's face became still more flushed and she flung up her head as she crossed the room, then put down the tray with a considerable clatter. But the clatter was unintentional—though Miss Ethel would not have believed this—and was due to a small piece of needlework on the table which caused the cup and glass to stand unevenly on the tray. Caroline heard the sharp indrawing of Miss Ethel's breath on the way to the door, and her whole being was in a prickly heat of defiance and embarrassment—"Only wait until to-morrow morning! To-morrow morning, they would just hear about it. They might look somewhere else for a girl who would let herself be spoken to as if she was something unpleasant that crawled——"
But through the fiery mist that seemed to blind her as she re-crossed the room, she heard another voice speaking: "Good evening, Miss Raby. How did you like your first day at the promenade?"
It was a lovely voice, clear yet mellow, and Caroline, despite all her anger and wounded pride, felt obliged to answer civilly: "Oh, I liked it all right, Miss Temple, thank you."
The door closed; there was a pause while Caroline's high heels clacked faintly across the tiled floor of the hall, and then a sound burst forth like the sudden chattering of rooks when they are startled in their nests by a shot fired close at hand.
"Well, I never! Coming in at a quarter to eleven and taking that attitude!" said Mrs. Bradford, in her heavy wheezy contralto.
"It's the same in everything. The world's upside down," jerked out Miss Ethel, flushed and tight-lipped. "Oh, we little knew what a lovely world we lived in twenty years ago. We took it all for granted. Good servants: low prices. People knowing their duty."
"Did they, though?" said Laura Temple. "I think it must have been perfectly horrid to be a maid-servant in those days. Only out one night a week, and once on Sunday at most, and kept as close during the rest of the time as if you were in a nunnery."
"They were happy, though," said Miss Ethel. "Happier, I think, than these girls are now. Look at Ellen! Wasn't she the picture of content?"