“You are the most audacious girl! I really never heard of anything quite so extraordinary in the whole course of my life. And, pray, may I ask why you said you had come from the St. Justs?”
“I know them, you see, and I thought your maid wouldn’t let me in, so I made up an excuse.”
“Then you are a liar as well. Now, let me give you my answer. I don’t know you or anything about you. I don’t like your appearance. I don’t intend to employ you as my reader. You are exceedingly awkward and your dress is untidy. If you are a lady you scarcely look like one, and ladies don’t go to lodge with women like Mary Hogg.”
“If they are very poor they do,” said Nesta. “I have got very little money.”
“What is your name?”
“Oh, please, don’t ask me. I would rather not say.”
“Indeed! You’d rather not say. And do you suppose that I’d take a girl into my employment—a girl who cannot give me her name?”
“I’d rather not. What is the use? You are very cruel. I wish there had been a blind one about; she wouldn’t be so cruel.”
“Will you please go. Just go straight out by that door. Don’t knock yourself against my silver again. The hall is very short, and the front door within a few feet away. Open it; get to the other side; shut it firmly after you and depart. Don’t let me see you again.”
Nesta did depart. She felt as though some one had beaten her. She had never, perhaps, in all her pampered existence, received so many blows in such a short time as that terrible old Mrs Johnston had managed to inflict. At first, she was too angry to feel all the misery that such treatment could cause; but when she entered the Hogg establishment and found in very truth from the moist atmosphere of the place, from the absence of any preparations for a meal, and from the worried expression on Mrs Hogg’s face, that she was indeed a laundress, she burst into tears.