"Thank you; that is good news. Because, to be quite frank, I was beginning to be afraid--in fact, we all were."
"You impertinent brute! Where are those other creatures?"
"Other creatures? You refer to my colleagues, male and female? We are all of us creatures, Mrs. Lamb--including you. I believe that two or three of them have already quitted your service, including the young Frenchwoman who was supposed to be your own particular maid. She said that she never bargained to wait on a woman of your class, so she's gone. I noticed two young women in the kitchen when I was down there just now. They seemed to be in a more or less tearful condition. Poor wretches! perhaps they never expected to find themselves in such a place as this. As for the rest of my colleagues, I fancy they are still in bed. I do not doubt that if you take them their overdue wages they'll get up, and get out of the house also, as quickly as you like. I imagine they'll be only too glad of the chance."
Mrs. Lamb looked at Mr. Cottrell as if she were meditating measures of a distinctly active kind. Although he might not have been conscious of it, for some seconds he stood in imminent peril of realising that, at least physically, his mistress was more than a match for the average man. But, apparently, after thinking things over she changed her mind and postponed hostilities.
"You shall be paid for this, my man--they all shall--just wait a bit." She moved, as if to return to her bedroom, then paused. "There's some one at the door."
There did seem to be some one at the front door, some one who saluted with equal vigour both the bell and the knocker. Mr. Cottrell was philosophical.
"Ah! there's been one or two already this morning. You've perhaps been in such a queer state yourself that you didn't hear them, though they made noise enough; but there have been several visitors. Jones the fishmonger wants his little account, and Franks the butcher wants his, and Murphy the greengrocer, and the baker, and the grocer, and the milkman, and, I think, the laundry, and three or four more besides. They all want their little accounts--good big ones some of them are. I peeped through the dining-room window, but I didn't notice just who was there, and I didn't open to them either. I've had about enough of opening to those kind of people; they won't go round to the side entrance, and it's no use asking them to. But that sounds as if it was the landlord come to put the brokers in for rent. A landlord always thinks himself entitled to make as much noise as he likes at his own front door."
Some one seemed to consider himself at liberty to make as much clatter as he liked.
"Cottrell, go down at once and see who is at the door."
"Wouldn't you like to go and see yourself, Mrs. Lamb?"