A clerk of the office was edging about, note-book in hand. She was a red-faced middle-aged woman, wearing a dusty, jet-trimmed black alpaca gown.
“A general servant is scarcely to be had, madam,” she said.
“Then what are all these?” asked Mrs. Brand. “I thought this was the ‘general servants’ department.”
“So it is. But most of these are general servants ‘where another is kept.’ They would not go as a single hand,” explained the clerk.
“I must have one who will consent to do so,” said Lucy. Something in her low clear voice and simple decision of manner made the registry office clerk turn and look at her. This was not the style of mistress with whom she was best acquainted.
“I will try to please you, madam,” said the clerk. “I fear there is nobody suitable in the house at present. But one may come in at any moment. A great many girls do not appear till about noon. May I ask you to take a seat? There is a sofa vacant near the window.”
As the sisters took their seats on the shabby little sofa, two or three gaudy girls strolled past them, inspecting them from their hats down to their boots.
“This puts me in mind of what we used to read about the slave marts in the States.”
“Yes, only it is the employers who are now on view!” said Florence snappily.
“I don’t know whether that makes it either worse—or better,” Lucy answered, drawing Hugh closer to her side.
The next moment a tall raw-boned woman with a forbidding countenance stepped up and bluntly asked,
“Yes, I am,” Lucy replied, her heart sinking within her.
“I’m looking for a place. What wages do you give?”
“That’s not very high for a general,” observed the woman.
“It is a very quiet situation,” said Lucy.
“H’m!—out in some country place, I suppose?”
“No,” answered Lucy, “my house is in Bloomsbury.” She was cowed into giving answers when she should rather have retorted by questions. Really she did not want to question this woman, or to have anything to do with her. Yet in this place she had not courage to say so. Mrs. Brand did not come to the rescue.
“Bloomsbury houses are pretty big—too big for one woman.”
“Only two,” Lucy answered; “myself and this little boy.”
Lucy was ready to cry out that she did not “expect” her to do anything, except to go away! But she was so demoralised that she meekly replied—