Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/19

 never before seen real beauty. He was like a hunter who had sauntered forth in search of rabbit, and suddenly, without a sign, a footprint to warn him, come upon a milk-white doe that gazed at him out of liquid eyes of unconcern. He caught his breath with a sort of snarl of surprise. He bit his lip, and tugged at his small, straw-coloured moustache. For the first time since he was grown to manhood he could find nothing to say.

The three walked in silence through an empty hallway past rows of closed, numbered doors, along a narrow passage that branched off from it, down three deeply worn uncarpeted steps, stopped in a still narrower passage, pervaded by a smell of past meals from the kitchens below, and lighted by an oil lamp in a bracket.

"These are the help's quarters," muttered Kirke, setting down the basket. He knocked on a door, under which a line of light shone. "Mrs. Jessop!" he called. At the same instant Davy was seen at the top of the backstairs along the passage carrying the tin box on his shoulder. He set it down with a small crash. "Ha!" he exclaimed, "you young maids have to bring your finery with you!"

The door on which Kirke had knocked opened and Mrs. Jessop appeared against a background of wooden boxes, tin tea, coffee, and spice containers and sides of smoked meat suspended from the ceiling. She was the housekeeper, a short stout woman with coarse grey hair and a wide mouth which could change a broad smile into lines of grimness or ferocity with amazing quickness. She had private means, in fact, was the widow of a small hotel-keeper, and was always talking about retiring from her present situation and "living private," but for some reason she remained. It was whispered in the scullery that