Aunt Bridget was out shopping, and Betsy Beauty (in the sulks with me, as I afterwards heard, for not asking her to the house-party) had run upstairs on hearing our horn, so I went direct to my father's room.
Nessy MacLeod answered my knock, but instead of opening the door to let me in, she slid out like a cat and closed it behind her. Never had her ungainly figure, her irregular features, and her red head seemed to me so repugnant. I saw at once that she was giving herself the airs of housekeeper, and I noticed that she was wearing the bunch of keys which used to dangle from Aunt Bridget's waist when I was a child.
"Your father is ill," she said.
I told her I knew that, and it was one of the reasons I was there.
"Seriously ill," she said, standing with her back to the door. "The doctor says he is to be kept perfectly quiet."
Indignant at the effrontery of the woman who was trying to keep me out of my father's room, I said:
"Let me pass, please."
"S'sh! He has a temperature, and I don't choose that anybody shall disturb him to-day."
"Let me pass," I repeated, and I must have pitched my voice so high that my father heard it.
"Is that Mary?" came from the other side of the door, whereupon Nessy beat a retreat, and at the next moment I was in my father's room.