It opened an angry inch, and
the cook's voice said, 'Please, m', may I speak to you a moment?'
Mother looked at father with a desperate expression. Then she put
her pretty sparkly Sunday shoes down from the sofa, and stood up in
them and sighed.
'As good fish in the sea,' said father, cheerfully, and it was not
till much later that the children understood what he meant.
Mother went out into the passage, which is called 'the hall', where
the umbrella-stand is, and the picture of the 'Monarch of the Glen'
in a yellow shining frame, with brown spots on the Monarch from the
damp in the house before last, and there was cook, very red and
damp in the face, and with a clean apron tied on all crooked over
the dirty one that she had dished up those dear delightful chickens
in. She stood there and she seemed to get redder and damper, and
she twisted the corner of her apron round her fingers, and she said
very shortly and fiercely--
'If you please ma'am, I should wish to leave at my day month.'
Mother leaned against the hatstand. The children could see her
looking pale through the crack of the door, because she had been
very kind to the cook, and had given her a holiday only the day
before, and it seemed so very unkind of the cook to want to go like
this, and on a Sunday too.
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