This appeal produced an effect on a good-tempered-faced
man-cook, who with some of the other servants was
looking on, and who stepped forward to interfere.
‘Take it up for her, Joe; can’t you?’
said this person.
‘What’s the good?’ replied the man.
’You don’t suppose the young lady will
see such as her; do you?’
This allusion to Nancy’s doubtful character,
raised a vast quantity of chaste wrath in the bosoms
of four housemaids, who remarked, with great fervour,
that the creature was a disgrace to her sex; and strongly
advocated her being thrown, ruthlessly, into the kennel.
‘Do what you like with me,’ said the girl,
turning to the men again; ’but do what I ask
you first, and I ask you to give this message for
God Almighty’s sake.’
The soft-hearted cook added his intercession, and
the result was that the man who had first appeared
undertook its delivery.
‘What’s it to be?’ said the man,
with one foot on the stairs.
’That a young woman earnestly asks to speak
to Miss Maylie alone,’ said Nancy; ’and
that if the lady will only hear the first word she
has to say, she will know whether to hear her business,
or to have her turned out of doors as an impostor.’
‘I say,’ said the man, ‘you’re
coming it strong!’
‘You give the message,’ said the girl
firmly; ’and let me hear the answer.’
The man ran upstairs. Nancy remained, pale and
almost breathless, listening with quivering lip to
the very audible expressions of scorn, of which the
chaste housemaids were very prolific; and of which
they became still more so, when the man returned,
and said the young woman was to walk upstairs.
‘It’s no good being proper in this world,’
said the first housemaid.
‘Brass can do better than the gold what has
stood the fire,’ said the second.
The third contented herself with wondering ’what
ladies was made of’; and the fourth took the
first in a quartette of ‘Shameful!’ with
which the Dianas concluded.
Regardless of all this: for she had weightier
matters at heart: Nancy followed the man, with
trembling limbs, to a small ante-chamber, lighted
by a lamp from the ceiling. Here he left her,
and retired.
A STRANGE INTERVIEW, WHICH IS A SEQUEL TO THE LAST CHAMBER
The girl’s life had been squandered in the streets,
and among the most noisome of the stews and dens of
London, but there was something of the woman’s
original nature left in her still; and when she heard
a light step approaching the door opposite to that
by which she had entered, and thought of the wide contrast
which the small room would in another moment contain,
she felt burdened with the sense of her own deep shame,
and shrunk as though she could scarcely bear the presence
of her with whom she had sought this interview.
