He snatched up the bag and went out, banging the hall door. I went straight back to the parlour and pulled the bell. I pulled it twice in desperation. There was no response of any sort.
“Hannah gets worse and worse,” I thought. I was ravenously hungry. There was not a scrap of preparation for a meal on the table, only the glass out of which father had drunk his accustomed quantity of beer, and the bone of the mutton-chop, and a small piece of bread. Hannah was certainly in her deafest and worst humour, and the cotton-wool was sticking firmly into her right ear.
I ran downstairs. I entered the kitchen.
“Sakes!” said Hannah.
I went close to her and dexterously put out my hand and removed the cotton-wool from her ear.
“Miss Dumps, how dare you?”
“I want my dinner,” I said.
“Sakes! What with frying chops for the Professor, and him going off in a hurry, why, my head is in a moil.”
“Hannah,” I said, “I must have some food. I am awfully hungry.”
“Well, set down right there by the kitchen table and I’ll give you another chop,” said Hannah. “I hear the Professor’s not coming back to-night. It’s the very queerest thing I remember happening since your poor mother died. But you set there and I’ll grill a chop for you, and you shall have it piping hot, and potatoes as well. There, now, what do you say to that?”