‘Oh, my lydy!’ said Patty, bursting into a torrent of tears.
‘Go, you little goose, and think no more of it; but ask nobody to wait for me. Now remember! you are here to do what you are told, but never to think. Thinking is the destruction of little maids. Ask Anne if she ever ventured to think when she was a girl like you.’
‘Yes, my lydy,’ said Patty, drying her eyes.
XVIII
It is not necessary to make a room snug with curtains drawn and the draught shut out, in the month of April as it is in early March, so that it was some time even after the lamp was brought in before the wistful clearness in the east, and that gleam of yellow, ‘the daffodil sky’ of the other quarter, which turns to ethereal tints of green, and has so many gradations of colour all its own, was shut out. Lady William liked to see the sky when she was in a cheerful or excited, not a sad mood. Such moods came to her as to every one by times; but she was angry and active to-night. Mab was not much used to such moments of commotion, to her mother’s slightly disturbed condition, and the scolding which had made Patty cry. Scolding was very infrequent in the cottage. Now and then Lady William would launch a fiery arrow; she would throw a distinct terrible light of displeasure upon dusty corners and silver badly cleaned. Sometimes even Mab would be brought to a sudden perception that her faults were quite visible and apparent, notwithstanding all her mother’s love and indulgence. But a moment like this, when all was disturbed and broken without any apparent motive, was astonishing to the girl. It was not for some time that Mab felt even the courage to inquire: only after tea when Lady William’s hasty ejaculations and movements of anger had almost died away.
‘But, mother, now that we are cool,’ said Mab——
‘Cool? I have never been anything but cool.’
‘Now,’ continued the girl, ‘that it is over, what was there so very bad in letting Mr. Leo come in to wait?’
‘And not his mother?’ said Lady William. ‘There would have been nothing particular, though very absurd if everybody who called had been asked in to wait. Fancy coming back to find the room crowded like a dentist’s waiting-room! But to bring in one and leave out another! Though I confess,’ said Lady William, with an angry flush, ‘that if the little goose had done so, and brought in Mrs. Swinford to find her son waiting, I should have been still more uncomfortable.’
‘Then you scolded her, mother, for what it was best to do?’