Twenty minutes later Jean took the heavily loaded tray and started going up the kitchen stairs. In front of her, treading more and more slowly, more and more wheezily, walked the housekeeper. The gas-light in the hall showed the fine tessellated black and white pavement and the two mahogany doors. As they walked past the door giving into a back room on the ground floor Jean heard a choking cough.
“There ’e is, pore gentleman, coughing ’is life away,” whispered Mrs. Lightfoot compassionately. “It’ll be a mercy for me, as well as for ’im and another I could name, when ’e’s gone. But that sort lingers on and on—never knowing they’re going either.”
They went on, up the first flight, and though there was another gas-jet halfway up, the house seemed wrapped in gloom. It was, however, a magnificent remnant of London’s eighteenth-century architecture; the banisters of the wide staircase were of wrought iron, and it did not require much imagination to see the beaux and the belles of a hundred and fifty years ago walking down the wide, low steps hand in hand.
When they reached the drawing-room floor, the door of the back drawing room opened, and a cheerful chubby-looking young man’s face looked out.
“Hullo! Mrs. Heavyfoot? Got a lady-in-waiting at last, eh?” And then the speaker looked hard at the girl carrying the tray. “Here’s a pretty miss! D’you know who you remind me of, pretty miss?”
“Now, none of your nonsense!” said Mrs. Lightfoot sharply, “you an engaged gentleman too! Fie! Mr. Goodbody.”
“You remind me,” went on Mr. Goodbody, taking no notice of his landlady, “of a beauteous young female called Pamela—‘Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded.’ But I fear me you’ll have none of the wondrous adventures which befell Pamela—not while you’re under the eagle eye of your present chaperon!”
Jean made no answer to these facetious remarks, but she looked at him so coldly that the young man felt, as he expressed it to himself, somewhat withered. Quietly he withdrew into his own quarters and shut the door.
“’E means no ’arm,” panted Mrs. Lightfoot tolerantly, “’e’s only out for a bit of fun. And yet, would you believe it? ’Is young lady, well, she ’ardly smiles! I suppose ’e’s tired her with ’is fun, that’s what ’e’s done.”
On and on they went, and then the housekeeper suddenly said: “’Ush!” In a low whisper she added: “I sees that ’er door is open. You just give me that tray, and then, when I’ve fixed ’er up comfortable, you can creep up be’ind me, and I’ll show you where you’re to sleep. Then I won’t ’ave to come up again to show you—see?”