The next moment she had rushed out of the room, this time allowing the door to bang behind her, while Waller jumped up, staring hard at the partly closed bookcase door as if to read there the cause of the girl's quick exit. "She must have been watching at the keyhole," he muttered to himself, for a guilty conscience needs no accuser, "and she's gone to tell cook." But it was something quite different that Bella was telling her fellow-servant, after throwing herself down in one of the kitchen chairs and laughing hysterically till she cried and choked. "Oh, don't be such a stupid," grunted plump Martha, standing over her and thumping her back. "What is it you have seen? Don't keep it all to yourself. What are you laughing at? You will have a fit directly." "Oh! oh! oh-h-oh!" sobbed Bella. "Do leave off, cook. You _hurt_." "Then tell me what you are laughing at." "He's--he's--he's--oh, dear!--oh, dear! I never saw such a sight in my life! I hadn't been gone more than five minutes when--ho! ho! ho! ho!" "Look here," cried cook, who was enjoying her fellow-servant's mirth, and who began thumping again at poor Bella's back, "do you want me to thump it out of you?" "Oh, no, no, no, no, no! Do a-done, cook!" sobbed out Bella, hysterically and incoherently. "Not more than five minutes, and his mouth so full he couldn't speak, and his eyes staring at me out of his head, and he had gobbled up nearly all the sausage cakes and all the hot bread, and I don't know how many cups of tea he had had, but the one before him was quite full. But oh, Martha, do a-done, and let me laugh it out, or I shall die!" Plump Martha's face was wreathed with smiles, and she chuckled a little audibly at her fellow-servant's mirth, while her pleasant little vanity was agreeably tickled at the appreciation of her culinary efforts all the while. "You are such a stupid, Bella," she said, good-humouredly. "When once you begin to laugh you never know how to leave off. I don't see anything to laugh at. Poor dear boy, he'd had no dinner, and only a morsel of cold pork-pie since breakfast, and he does like my cakes." CHAPTER SEVEN. SECRET PREPARATIONS. Waller's appetite was gone. The girl seemed to have taken it out of the room with her, and the boy thrust his hands into his pockets and sat thinking for some time about his plans, and ended by rising from his hardly touched meal to cross to the bell. But a fresh idea occurred to him, and, going back to the table, he took his untouched cup, carried it carefully to the open window, and emptied it upon a flower-bed; then, returning the cup, he rang the bell, waited till he heard Bella's step in the hall, and then began to parade in a sort of "sentry go" up and down in front of the partly open bookcase, while the maid, after a glance at the boy's averted countenance and frowning face, not daring to catch his eye for fear of bursting out into a fresh fit of laughter, began to clear the table.