“If there’s any mortal thing that I can do for you, no matter what it is, you’ve only got to name it, and you can consider it done. What’s more, I’m on to get you any blessed thing you want, from the Lord Mayor’s coach to——”
I did not wait for him to explain to what—I presume his remarks were tailing off into metaphor—but, withdrawing into the passage, I shut the door in his face, taking the precaution to turn the key.
It was well I did, because he instantly tried the handle, and, when he found it would not yield, rapping at the frosted glass panels, he addressed me from without:
“Excuse me, miss, for one single moment, but would you allow me to say——”
I should have thought that permission to say anything was the last thing he would have required. Anyhow, I did not give it.
Depositing the articles he had just given me on the kitchen table, I marched upstairs. At the top I met mamma.
“Norah, what do you mean by carrying on an animated conversation with the baker’s man?” I carrying on an animated conversation! My share in it had been small. “What an extraordinary creature you are. Your cheeks look as if they were positively burning.”
Hers would have looked the same if she had borne my part in the scene which had just been enacted. But I said nothing.
“You must go and do those errands at once, your sisters are waiting. Be as quick as you decently can, and please, if possible, forget nothing.”
She gave me no time to compose myself, but opening the front door with her own hands ushered me through it, as if I were some bothering visitor whom she was in a dreadful hurry to see the last of.