"No--Agnes will fetch you," says she quickly, and took up her book
again.
Well--that was certainly strange: a lady's maid having to be fetched by
the house-maid whenever her lady wanted her! I wondered if there were
no bells in the house; but the next day I satisfied myself that there
was one in every room, and a special one ringing from my mistress's
room to mine; and after that it did strike me as queer that, whenever
Mrs. Brympton wanted anything, she rang for Agnes, who had to walk the
whole length of the servants' wing to call me.
But that wasn't the only queer thing in the house. The very next day I
found out that Mrs. Brympton had no nurse; and then I asked Agnes about
the woman I had seen in the passage the afternoon before. Agnes said
she had seen no one, and I saw that she thought I was dreaming. To be
sure, it was dusk when we went down the passage, and she had excused
herself for not bringing a light; but I had seen the woman plain enough
to know her again if we should meet. I decided that she must have been
a friend of the cook's, or of one of the other women-servants: perhaps
she had come down from town for a night's visit, and the servants
wanted it kept secret. Some ladies are very stiff about having their
servants' friends in the house overnight. At any rate, I made up my
mind to ask no more questions.
In a day or two, another odd thing happened. I was chatting one
afternoon with Mrs. Blinder, who was a friendly disposed woman, and had
been longer in the house than the other servants, and she asked me if I
was quite comfortable and had everything I needed. I said I had no
fault to find with my place or with my mistress, but I thought it odd
that in so large a house there was no sewing-room for the lady's maid.
"Why," says she, "there _is_ one; the room you're in is the old
sewing-room."
"Oh," said I; "and where did the other lady's maid sleep?"
At that she grew confused, and said hurriedly that the servants' rooms
had all been changed about last year, and she didn't rightly remember.
That struck me as peculiar, but I went on as if I hadn't noticed:
"Well, there's a vacant room opposite mine, and I mean to ask Mrs.
Brympton if I mayn't use that as a sewing-room."
To my astonishment, Mrs. Blinder went white, and gave my hand a kind of
squeeze. "Don't do that, my dear," said she, trembling-like. "To tell
you the truth, that was Emma Saxon's room, and my mistress has kept it
closed ever since her death."
"And who was Emma Saxon?"
"Mrs. Brympton's former maid."
"The one that was with her so many years?" said I, remembering what
Mrs. Railton had told me.
Mrs. Blinder nodded.
"What sort of woman was she?"
"No better walked the earth," said Mrs. Blinder. "My mistress loved her
like a sister."
"But I mean--what did she look like?"
Mrs. Blinder got up and gave me a kind of angry stare. "I'm no great
hand at describing," she said; "and I believe my pastry's rising." And
she walked off into the kitchen and shut the door after her.