"I wouldn't say another word if I hadn't begun, that I wouldn't!" growled the hard-faced one. "Now, then, where'd I got to?" "`Show me in to your mistress,'" exclaimed cook; when "Mr Eddard," turning round upon her very sharply, she shrunk as it were into her shell, and nipped together her lips. "I tell you what it is," said Edward viciously; "if I'm to tell this here, I tells it, but I ain't going to be driven wild with vexatious interruptions. Do you both want to know it, or don't you?" "O yes, please, Mr Eddard, we do indeed," exclaimed the two domestics; "so please go on!" Thus adjured, and apparently mollified by the respect paid to him, as much as by the stewpan essence, "Mr Eddard" continued: "Well, I shows him into the breakfast-room, and then goes in to missus, who had just come down from Miss Bedford's room; and looking all white and troubled, she goes across the hall, and I opens the door for her, and up comes my gentleman with a rush, catches her hand in his, and kisses it. "`That's making yourself at home anyhow, young man,' I says to myself, backing-out of the room; and I can't say how it happened, but the corner of the carpet got rucked up, so that I was ever so long before I could get the door shut, and they would keep talking, so that I couldn't help hearing what they said." "And what did they say?" said cook. "Ain't I a-coming to it as fast as I can?" said Edward angrily. "What an outrageous hurry you always are in with everything, except getting the dinner ready in time!" "Now don't be cruel, Mr Eddard," said the housemaid, tittering, when "Mr Eddard" himself condescended to laugh at what our Scotch brethren would call his own "wut," to the great discomfiture of cook, who wanted to fire-up and give them a bit of her mind, but did not dare, for fear of losing the end of the coveted history. The consequence of her reticence, though, was that "Mr Eddard" grew exceedingly amiable, and went on with his account. "That door being shut," he said, with a grim smile, which was meant to be pleasant, but was the very reverse, "I didn't want to go; for I put it to you now, under the circumstances, was it likely as he'd stay long?" "Of course not!" said cook. "Not likely!" said the housemaid. "Well, then," continued Edward, "where was the use of me going back to my pantry only to be called directly? So I took his hat and brushed it, and when I'd brushed it and set it down, I set to and brushed it again, and so on half a dozen times, while--it was very foolish of them if they didn't want other people to hear--they kept on talking louder and louder. "`Mr Vining,' says missus, `I must ask you as a gentleman to come no more.' "`But, in 'evin's name,' he says, `what have I done that you should turn upon me like this?' "`Nothing,' says missus; `nothing at all. I pity you from the bottom of my heart, as much as I pity that sweet girl; but it cannot be. You must come here no more.'