“Emily has got her hand out in bread-making, and I am trying mine. This is almost ready now.”
He walked across the floor and lifted me to my feet; laid me incontinently upon the lounge, and confronted the cook.
“Take up that tray!” She obeyed dumbly. “Carry it out into the kitchen and finish the bread. Yes! I mean it! Get your hand in before you are a minute older, or I’ll know the reason why. And if the bread is not good, I shall send you back to your master to-morrow morning, and tell him I have no further use for you.”
He would have cut his hand off before he would have struck a woman, and the creature knew it as well as I did, but she cowered before the blue blaze of his eyes, as at a lightning flash.
His call stayed her on the threshold.
“Do you understand what I have said?”
The sphinx crumbled:
“Ya’as, suh!”
“You understand, too, that your hand is not to get out again?”