“Oh, you’ll say anything, of course, to back them up; you think they’re your only friends and will pay you best. But you’ll find that’s a mistake, Mr. Pownceby the lawyer, just as they’ll find it’s a mistake. What do you want here, Dunning? What business has servants, except my footman to open the door, here? You’ve been a deal too much petted in your time, and you’ll find out the difference now.”
“Mr. Pownceby, sir,” said Dunning, who had suddenly appeared on the scene, exceedingly dark and lowering, “Is it true, sir, what I hear, that none of us old servants, not me, sir, that looked after him night and day, is named in my old master’s will?”
“I am sorry to say it is quite true, Dunning,” Mr. Pownceby said; “but I don’t doubt that Mrs. Piercey will remember your long service, as Sir Giles wished her to do.”
“How do you know what Sir Giles wished? I know best what Sir Giles said I was to do,” cried Patty. “As for long service, yes, if holding on like grim death and taking as little trouble as possible is what you mean.”
“Me take little trouble!” cried Dunning, foaming. “I’ve not had a night’s rest, not an unbroken night, since Lady Piercey died--not one. Oh, I knowed how it would be! when she come about him, flattering him and slavering him, and the poor dear old gentleman thought it was good for Mr. Gervase; and then after, didn’t she put it upon him as she was in the family-way, and she never was in the family-way, no more than I was. Hoh! ask the women! Hoh! look at her where she stands! He thought as there was an heir coming, and there ain’t no more of an heir coming than----”
“Let us go, please, let us go,” cried Margaret, in distress. “Cousin Gerald, Mr. Pownceby, we have nothing, nothing surely, to do with this. Oh, let us get away.”
“Put that fellow out of my house!” cried Patty, “put him out of my house! You’re a nice gentleman, Gerald Piercey, to stand there and encourage a man like that to insult a lady. Robert, take that man by the shoulders and put him out.”
“He had just best try,” said Dunning, squaring his shoulders. But Robert, who was young and slim, knew better than to try. He stood sheepishly fumbling by the door, opening it for the party who were going out. Dunning was not an adversary to be lightly encountered. Colonel Piercey, however, not insensible to the appeal made to him, laid his hand on Dunning’s shoulder.