"I'm sure, miss"--the other protested with a faint smile not unmixed with malice--"it isn't Cook's fault--she does 'er best. But I'm sure in this 'ouse it's 'ard to please. What with meals at any hour and never knowing if it's two or _three_ ... I'm sure..." She stopped short at the sudden anger in Jill's expressive gray eyes. "That will do." She threw back her hair, which fell in a dark cloud over her shoulders, narrowing into damp points far below the line of her waist. "I'll come down and see Cook myself." Lizzie retreated, her face sullen, before the peremptory young voice. Then, changing her mind, she whisked round and barred Jill's passage insolently. "I'd like to say I want to leave. This day month." She tossed her head. "I don't seem to suit--and it don't suit me!--such goings-on ... an' lawless talk. I ain't used to a mistress as ups and breaks windows--it ain't decent!--an' my young man, 'e sez..." "Be silent!"--Jill was white with suppressed rage--"If you want to give notice you must speak to Mrs. Uniacke." "_Or_ Mr. Somerfield, I s'pose..." The barbed shaft stung the girl as she ran down the stairs, leaving Lizzie, quivering, in possession of the field. Jill reached the basement, breathless and angry. "Cook!" she called at the kitchen door. A stout and slovenly woman turned slowly round from before the range. "Yes, miss?" She wiped her greasy hands on a torn apron, and stood there, expectant. "What's all this about the chicken? Lizzie tells me it hasn't come?" "No, miss." She leaned against the table, massive, inert, with an over-red face. Her person exhaled a faint smell of brandy and the glazed eyes completed the story. "Then what are we going to have for dinner?" "I'm sure I don't know, miss." Jill gave her one look and passed with a quick stride into the larder. Thrown anyhow on the dingy shelves were scraps of fish, butter and suet, jars of dripping, some shrivelled apples and the scraggy remains of a leg of mutton. The closed-in place smelled of cheese and mice. Jill explored with hopeless disgust. Too well she knew the domestic chaos that balanced her mother's political activity. For Mrs. Uniacke had no time for "home." She scorned the narrow "sheltered life" and wore out her strength in that daily fight to prove that Woman was fitted to rule. "This mutton now..." Jill tipped the bone onto a clean plate from its close companionship with a raw herring, and came back, still frowning, into the kitchen. "You could grill it, couldn't you?" she asked sharply. The cook, stupidly, turned it over. "I _could_..." she debated with tipsy solemnity. "But there's only, then, enough for two." "Well, we _are_ two!" Jill was impatient.