No answer. No signs of being heard. Everything seemed perfectly still. Mrs. Chaffen managed to lodge the tray against the door-post and hold it steady with one hand, while she tried the door with the other. But she could not open it.
"Mrs. Hopley, it's me with the tray. Please open."
It was opened then. Ann Hopley flung it wide and stood there staring, a saucepan in her hand. "What, have you brought the things down!" she exclaimed in a voice of surprise. "Why on earth couldn't you have let them be till I came up?"
The nurse carried her tray onwards, and put it on the board under the window. At the table, not having been polite enough to his wife to take off his flapping straw hat in her presence, sat the gardener, munching his dinner as toothless people best can, his back to the light.
"Why did you keep me waiting at the door?" asked the nurse, not pleased.
"Did you wait?" returned Ann Hopley. "I was in the back place there, washing out the saucepans. You might have come in without knocking."
"The door was bolted."
"The door bolted!--not it," disputed Ann. "The latch has got a nasty trick of catching, though."
"This is fine weather, Mr. Hopley!" said the nurse, leaving the point uncontested, and raising her voice.
He seemed to be, as Ann had formerly expressed it, as deaf as a post. Neither turning his head nor answering, but keeping on at his dinner. Ann bent her head to his ear.