The young woman, who had by this time, noted her appearance, replied
only by a look of virtuous disdain; and summoned a man to answer her.
To him, Nancy repeated her request.

'What name am I to say?' asked the waiter.

'It's of no use saying any,' replied Nancy.

'Nor business?' said the man.

'No, nor that neither,' rejoined the girl. 'I must see the lady.'

'Come!' said the man, pushing her towards the door. 'None of this.
Take yourself off.'

'I shall be carried out if I go!' said the girl violently; 'and I can
make that a job that two of you won't like to do. Isn't there anybody
here,' she said, looking round, 'that will see a simple message carried
for a poor wretch like me?'

This appeal produced an effect on a good-tempered-faced man-cook, who
with some of the other servants was looking on, and who stepped forward
to interfere.

'Take it up for her, Joe; can't you?' said this person.

'What's the good?' replied the man. 'You don't suppose the young lady
will see such as her; do you?'

This allusion to Nancy's doubtful character, raised a vast quantity of
chaste wrath in the bosoms of four housemaids, who remarked, with great
fervour, that the creature was a disgrace to her sex; and strongly
advocated her being thrown, ruthlessly, into the kennel.

'Do what you like with me,' said the girl, turning to the men again;
'but do what I ask you first, and I ask you to give this message for
God Almighty's sake.'

The soft-hearted cook added his intercession, and the result was that
the man who had first appeared undertook its delivery.

'What's it to be?' said the man, with one foot on the stairs.

'That a young woman earnestly asks to speak to Miss Maylie alone,' said
Nancy; 'and that if the lady will only hear the first word she has to
say, she will know whether to hear her business, or to have her turned
out of doors as an impostor.'

'I say,' said the man, 'you're coming it strong!'

'You give the message,' said the girl firmly; 'and let me hear the
answer.'

The man ran upstairs. Nancy remained, pale and almost breathless,
listening with quivering lip to the very audible expressions of scorn,
of which the chaste housemaids were very prolific; and of which they
became still more so, when the man returned, and said the young woman
was to walk upstairs.

'It's no good being proper in this world,' said the first housemaid.

'Brass can do better than the gold what has stood the fire,' said