"Cook, I forbid you. I'm mistress here."

"How dare you insult me before the servants! Grace is mistress here,
if it comes to that."

"Grace has given me over the housekeeping. I am mistress when she is
too unwell to attend to it."

"Nothing of the sort. Grace is the eldest, I would give way to her,
but I'm not going to give way to you. Cook, the dinner won't be ready
for another half hour, will it?"

"I don't know when the dinner will be ready, and I don't care."

"It is a quarter to seven now, dinner won't be ready before seven,
will it, cook? Keep it back a bit. Now I must be off."

And, as Maggie expected, Sally ran past the glass houses and the pear
and apple trees, for there was at the end of the vegetable garden a
door in the brick wall that enclosed the manor house. It was used by
the gardeners, and it communicated with a path leading through some
corn and grass land to the high road. There were five acres of land
attached to the manor house, tennis lawn, shady walks, flower garden,
kitchen garden, stables, and coach house at the back, and all this
spoke in somewhat glaring fashion the wealth and ease of a rich city
merchant.

"There she goes," thought Maggie, flaunting her head. "What a fool she
is to bully father instead of humouring him. We shall never hear the