Rosalie gave a little gasp, and tears of vexation sprang to her eyes.
‘They just want to spite me,’ she said. ‘Of course the cheeses are hardly fit for use yet—they can’t have even tried to dispose of them; they simply pretended to sell them so as to entrap me, and now they are throwing them back on my hands before I have time to think what to do with them. That odious John Hardy! Mean-spirited wretch—it is all his doing!’
Even as she thus cogitated there was a rattling of wheels without, and the carrier’s cart drew up with a flourish at the door.
‘Please, ma’am,’ cried Susan, thrusting in her head, ‘Mr. Smith be here with ever so many cheeses as he says Hardys are sending back; and there’s sixteen-and-eightpence to pay; and he says, ma’am, will you please send the men to unload them at once?’
‘Call Sam,’ said her mistress in a strangled voice. ‘Tell him to come at once with two or three of the others, and to take the cheeses carefully upstairs.’
‘Why, the cheese-room be a’most full, ma’am. I doubt there’ll not be much room for them there. We was waitin’, you know, till Christmas had gone over a bit to send the last load to town.’
‘Pile them up in the dairy, then, for the present. Well, why don’t you go?’ she cried, irritably, as the girl remained staring at her. ‘Make the men get to work at once while I find my purse.’
As she came down from her room, purse in hand, she observed through the staircase window the blank faces of Sam and his underlings, as the carrier tossed the cheeses to them from the cart, grinning the while as though at some excellent joke. She stamped her foot, and caught her breath with a little angry sob. She had been so proud in despatching to Branston load after load of these fine round cheeses, she had often congratulated herself on the wisdom and cleverness of this expedient of hers—and now to have them ignominiously thrown back at her without having even disposed of one—to be turned into a laughing-stock for her own folks as well as for the whole town of Branston; to be actually made to pay for the ill-success of her experiment! Rosalie was as a rule open-handed and generous enough, but the disbursal of this particular sixteen-and-eightpence caused her a pang of almost physical anguish.
Half an hour later, when the carrier had departed and the men returned to their work, she entered the dairy, and stood gazing with clasped hands and a melancholy countenance at the heaps of despised Blue Vinneys which were piled up on every side.
To her presently came Sam Belbin, his arms dangling limply by his sides, his expression duly composed to sympathetic gloom.