"Oh! come in, won't you?" she said, with a smile and in a voice singularly soft and refined. "My sister will be ready to receive you in a moment. I was only a little startled. The fact is," she said laughing, "I thought the door was bolted; but sometimes the bolt does not go quite in. My sister—Won't you take a chair? Let me remove those things." She took up the pile of under-garments that was on one chair and placed it on top of a pile of dishes and other things on the other.
"Oh! I am so sorry," protested the girl, who observed that she was concealing the dishes; "I was sure the girl told me it was the door at the head of the stairs."
"She is the stupidest creature—that girl. I must really get my sister to speak to Mrs. Kale about her. I would, except that I am afraid the poor thing might lose her place. There is another door just off the little passage that she probably meant."
"Yes—probably. It was I that was stupid."
"Oh! no, not at all. You must excuse the disorder you find. The fact is, this is our work-room, and we were just—I was just doing a little ironing to get these things finished. When your card was brought up—well, we both were—and as my sister is so much quicker, she ran to get ready and I thought I would just finish this when I was at it, and you would excuse me."
"Oh! I am so sorry. I wouldn't for anything have interrupted you," repeated the girl, observing how all the time she was trying unobtrusively to arrange her poor attire, rolling down her sleeves and smoothing her darned skirt, all the while with a furtive glance of her eye toward the door.
"Oh! my dear, I wouldn't have had you turned away for anything in the world. My sister would be désolée. We have a better room than this, where we usually receive our visitors. You will see what a nice room it is. We can't very well afford to have two rooms; but this is too small for us to live in comfortably and we have to keep it because it has a stationary wash-stand with hot water, which enables us to do our laundering."
"Yes, I see," murmured Miss Leigh softly.
"You see, we earn our living by making underclothes for—for a firm——"
"I see, and what nice work you do." She was handling a garment softly.