The entire silence of Juliet to these interrogatories, gave a moment to the mercer to ask for orders. 'You are in haste, Sir, are you?' said Mrs Ireton; 'I have your pardon to beg, too, have I? I am really very unfortunate this morning. However, pray take your things away, Sir, if it's so immensely troublesome to you to exhibit them. Only be so good as to acquaint your chief, whoever he may be, that you had not time to wait for me to make any purchase.' The man offered the humblest apologies, which were all disdained; and self-defending excuses, which were all retorted; he was peremptorily ordered to be gone; with an assurance that he should answer for his disrespect to his master; who, she flattered herself, would give him a lesson of better behaviour, by the loss of his employment. Harassed with apprehension of what she had to expect in this new residence, Juliet would silently have followed him. 'Stay, Ma'am, stay!' cried Mrs Ireton; 'give me leave to ask one question:--whither are you going, Mrs ... what's your name?' 'I ... I feared, Madam, that I had come too soon.' 'O, that's it, is it? I have not paid you sufficient attention, perhaps?--Nay it's very likely. I did not run up to receive you, I confess. I did not open my arms to embrace you, I own! It was very wrong of me, certainly. But I am apt to forget myself. I want a flapper prodigiously. I know nothing of life,--nothing of manners. Perhaps you will be so good as to become my monitress? 'Twill be vastly kind of you. And who knows but, in time, you may form me? How happy it will be if you can make something of me!' The maid, now, tired of wiping up splash after splash, and rubbing out spot after spot; finding her work always renewed by the mischievous little boy, was sullenly walking to the other end of the room. 'O, you're departing too, are you?' said Mrs Ireton; 'and pray who dismissed you? whose commands have you for going? Inform me, I beg, who it is that is so kind as to take the trouble off my hands, of ordering my servants? I ought at least to make them my humble acknowledgements. There's nothing so frightful as ingratitude.' The maid, not comprehending this irony, grumblingly answered, that she had wiped up the grease and the slops till her arms ached; for the little boy made more dirt and nastiness than the cur himself. 'The boy?--The cur?--What's all this?' cried Mrs Ireton; 'who, and what, is the woman talking of? The boy? Has the boy no name?--The cur? Have you no more respect for your lady's lap dog?--Grease too?--Nastiness!--you turn me sick! I am ready to faint! What horrible images you present to me! Has nobody any salts? any lavendar-water? How unfortunate it is to have such nerves, such sensations, when one lives with such mere speaking machines!'