Ella tapped more loudly, and almost before she finished doing so, a faint sound of weeping caught her ear, but no reply came to her knocks.
“Is any one in?” she called out, beginning to feel a little uneasy. “Willie, Hetty, who is it crying? Mrs Rose, are you there?”
A sort of movement inside, sounding like the slow, enforcedly deliberate way in which a little, short-legged child gets down from a chair, followed by a pattering of small feet across the stone floor, became audible. Then a doleful voice replied to her questions:
“I’m all aloned. I’m Hetty. I dunno who you is. Mammy’s took Willie in Master Crocker’s waggin to doctor’s. Willie’s eyes is bad. And the pot won’t budge and the dinner’s spilin.”
Then ensued a louder burst of bitter wailing.
Ella rapped again impatiently.
“Let me in then, you silly child,” she cried. “I’m Ella—Miss Ella from the hall. You know my voice, surely, Hetty. I’m not a wolf,” she added, half laughing.
Thus adjured, Hetty cautiously approached.
“Miss Ella,” she said in a tone of relief. “I’ll try to loose the door, Miss, but its drefful hard. Mother locked it outside and pushed the key in under the door. I weren’t to open it till daddy comed home, but mammy didn’t know Miss Ella’d be coming,” she added, as if half in vindication to herself of her departure from mammy’s injunctions.
“Then do the same again,” said Ella. “Push the key under the door and I’ll open it outside. Your little hands can’t turn it.”