Mrs. Steptoe's tremulous accents stopped him, but he could not catch what she said. "Come down here at once," he cried again, "and speak up plain. Where is your mistress, and the children?" He just got his voice under control for the question.
Mrs. Steptoe came down half-way. Her costume forbade a complete descent. "The mistress and the young ladies and nurse, sir?"
"Yes!—the mistress and the young ladies and nurse. Where are they? Speak quick!"
Mrs. Steptoe found voice enough to say: "Ain't they at Tulse Hill, sir?"
"That's what I want to know. Do you know?"
Mrs. Steptoe found some more voice. "Didn't the mistress say Tulse Hill, Harmood?" She asked the question of the unseen, above, not without recognition of her own necessity as a go-between. Direct communications from a house-and-parlour-maid, single, in a nightgown, could hardly be in order under the circumstances.
"Mrs. Challis said Tulse Hill, Mrs. Steptoe." The delicacy of the position is recognized, and the intercessor and mediator installed. Who repeats the words officially, and adds, as a mere human creature: "My word a mercy, what a turn it giv'!"
"What did your mistress say? When did she go? Did she leave no message?"
"Not with me, sir!" Then officially: "Did Mrs. Challis leave no message, Harmood?" Which, substituting as it does a name for an offensive designation, confirms and ratifies the claim to mediumship made by the speaker, who accordingly repeats the substance of Miss Harmood's communication from above, replacing the offensive designation in the text where it had been ignored in the original.
"The mistress didn't leave no message, sir, only a note. She was taking the young ladies to their grandmamma's, and we was not to expect her back."