“How dare you meddle with anything in this room? Leave it instantly.”
Some one replied in a low musical voice,
“I am very sorry. I was only looking at a picture. I noticed a likeness——”
“You are here to clean up and not to notice. You are a servant and not a visitor. Another time and you will be reported. You may go.”
At this point a girl was thrust out into the hall so roughly that she fell on her knees. It was only a chambermaid, and perhaps she was accustomed to being spoken to harshly, although she did not appear to be, for she covered her face with her hands and crouched against the wall.
“How could any one be so brutal?” exclaimed Billie indignantly as she ran to the trembling little figure and helped her to her feet. “Won’t you come into our room until you calm down? It was cruel to have spoken to you so roughly.”
The door opened again and an old woman stood on the threshold, leaning on a cane. There was something rather regal in her appearance, in spite of her plain black dress and grotesque-looking old garden hat with its flapping brim which half concealed her face.
“Don’t interfere, young woman,” said the formidable-looking personage. “Young American girls are far too impertinent.”
Billie, who all her life had been the champion of the oppressed, was not frightened by the glare from the old woman’s steely blue eyes. She made no reply, however. Her father had taught her never to engage in a battle of words if she could possibly avoid it, especially with an older person.
Putting her arm around the little chambermaid’s waist, she drew her into Miss Campbell’s room and closed the door. The other girls who had been silent witnesses of the scene gathered around them.