eeping. And
after a little time Mrs. Tams departed.

VI

Mrs. Tams had decided to undertake an enterprise involving extreme
gallantry--surpassing the physical. She went downstairs and stood
outside the parlour door, which was not quite shut. Within the
parlour, or throne-room, existed a beautiful and superior being, full
of grace and authority, who belonged to a race quite different from
her own, who was beyond her comprehension, who commanded her and kept
her alive and paid money to her, who accepted her devotion casually
as a right, who treated her as a soft cushion between himself and
the drift and inconvenience of the world, and who occasionally, as a
supreme favour, caught her a smart slap on the back, which flattered
her to excess. She went into the throne-room if she was called
thither, or if she had cleansing or tidying work there; she spoke to
the superior being if he spoke to her. But she had never till then
conceived the breath-taking scheme of entering the throne-room for
a purpose of her own, and addressing the superior being without an
invitation to do so.

Nevertheless, since by long practice she was courageous, she meant to
execute the scheme. And she began by knocking at the door. Although
Rachel had seriously warned her that for a domestic servant to
knock at the parlour door was a grave sin, she simply could not help
knocking. Not to knock seemed to her wantonly sacrilegious. Thus she
knocked, and a voice told her to come in.

There was the superior being, his back to the fire and his legs
apart--formidable!

She curtsied--another sin according to the new code. Then she
discovered that she was inarticulate.

"Well?"

Words burst from her--

"Her's crying her eyes out up yon, mester."

And Mrs. Tams also snivelled.

The superior being frowned and said testily, yet not without a touch
of careless toleration--

"Oh, get away, you silly old fool of a woman!"

Mrs. Tarns got away, not entirely ill-content.

In the lobby she heard an unusual rapping on the glass of the front
door, and sharply opened it to inform the late disturber that there
existed a bell and a knocker for respectable people. A shabby youth
gave her a note for "Louis Fores, Esq.," and said that there was an
answer. So that she was forced to renew the enterprise of entering the
throne-room.

In another couple of minutes Louis was running upstairs. His wife
heard him, and shook in bed from excitement at the crisis wh