“We are thinking of coming to you to-morrow for a week, Dinah; I and my two girls. They are wild to go to the Easter ball. Which rooms can you give us?”
“Not any rooms,” spoke Miss Dinah, decisively. “We cannot take you in.”
“Not take me in! When the servant opened the door to us she said the house was not full. I put the question to her.”
“But we are expecting it to be full,” said Miss Dinah, curtly. “The Beales generally come over to the ball; and we must keep rooms for them.”
“You don’t know that they are coming, I expect. And in a boarding-house the rule holds good, ‘First come, first served.’”
“A boarding-house holds its own rules, and is not guided by other people’s. Very sorry: but we cannot make room this time for you and your daughters.”
“I’ll soon see that,” retorted Mrs. Lewis, getting hot. “Where’s Emma Lake? I am her cousin, and shall insist on being taken in.”
“She can’t take you in without my consent. And she won’t: that’s more. Look here, Mrs. Podd—I beg your pardon—the new name does not always come pat to me. When you were staying here before, and kept us so long out of our money, it put us to more inconvenience than you had any idea of. We——”
“You were paid at last.”