“Interfere with me!” cried Theresa hotly. “Much you know about it, James Craig. That’s just what she has done, with a vengeance!”
James shrugged his shoulders. “Why, I don’t see what concern it is of yours, if the family chooses to get a companion for Miss Priscilla. You ain’t got to pay for her board and keep.”
“Perhaps I ain’t,” returned Theresa with added sharpness, “but perhaps, on the other hand, I got to pay for the board and keep of somebody else, that she has done out of a rare chance.”
The butler’s eyes opened wide. “You don’t mean to say——” he stammered.
“I don’t mean to say nothing,” the maid retorted quickly. “I just ain’t going to do anything that’s outside my work, that’s all. I respect myself too much to lay a hand to anything I didn’t engage for, and if you and Hannah choose to fetch and carry for strangers from no-one-knows-where, you can do it and welcome! But the more sillies you, that’s all!”
The good-natured James watched the irate woman as she flounced up-stairs and then drew in his breath with a long whistling sound. He thought Theresa was “a terror” and he made up his mind then and there that he would “steer clear of her” in the future.
In the meantime Polly, who was quite unconscious of having given offense to any one in the world and who felt at peace with all men, was astonished and dismayed, as the days went by, to find that Theresa did not like her. At first she did not realize that anything was amiss. The maid seemed to her a very haughty lady whose manners were proud and overbearing to be sure, and not at all gentle and sweet as Priscilla’s mother’s and Miss Cicely’s were, but who was probably, nevertheless, good and kind at heart, like all the rest of the world. Once or twice she brushed roughly against Polly in the halls, but Polly said, “Excuse me,” as sister had taught her to do when she got in any one’s way, and then thought no more about it.
Then, another time, Polly was going down-stairs on an errand for Hannah and just as she reached the second flight Theresa came out of the sitting-room and began to busy herself dusting the top of the baluster-rail. Polly said, “Good-morning!” as politely as she could, but Theresa did not appear to hear her and the next minute Polly’s dress had caught in a nail or something, it could not have been Theresa’s hand, of course, and she was crashing down-stairs, heels over head, bumpety-bump! as hard as she could go. She was so badly frightened that it took her some time to recover herself, but her bruises were not serious and James brought a chocolate spice-cake out of the butler’s pantry, which he said he would give her if she did not cry any more. So she dried her tears and promised she would “look where she walked” after that and was happy again in no time at all.
But before she went up-stairs James whispered in her ear: “Say, I wouldn’t get in Theresa’s way, if I were you. Theresa is—er—nervous and little girls bother her, I guess, and it’s always better when folks is like that to keep yourself to yourself. See?”