“Please miss, what do you wish for luncheon?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m the—­assistant cook at the ’All, miss.  Lady Shuttleworth’s assistant cook.  Sir Augustus desired me to cook for you to-day.”

“Then please do it.”

“Yes miss.  What do you wish for luncheon?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes miss.  And the gentleman—­don’t he want nothing neither?”

“He’ll probably tell you when he does.”

“Yes miss.  It’s as well to know a little beforehand, ain’t it, miss.  There’s nothing in the—­a-hem—­’ouse, and I suppose I’d have to buy something.”

“Please do.”

“Yes miss.  Perhaps if you’d tell me what the gentleman likes I could go out and get it.”

“But I don’t know what he likes.  And wouldn’t you get wet?  Send somebody.”

“Yes miss.  Who?”

Priscilla gazed at her a moment.  “Ah yes—­” she said, “I forgot.  I’m afraid there isn’t anybody.  I think you had better ask my uncle what he wants, and then if you would—­I’m very sorry you should have such bad weather—­but if you don’t mind, would you go and buy the things?”

“Yes miss.”

The girl went away, and Priscilla began for the first time to consider the probability of her having in the near future to think of and order three meals every day of her life; and not only three meals, but she dimly perceived there would be a multitude of other dreary things to think of and order,—­their linen, for instance, must be washed, and how did one set about that?  And would not Fritzing’s buttons presently come off and have to be sewn on again?  His socks, when they went into holes, could be thrown out of the window and new ones bought, but even Priscilla saw that you could not throw a whole coat out of a window because its buttons had come off.  There would, then, have to be some mending done for Fritzing, and Annalise would certainly not be the one to do it.  Was the simple life a sordid life as well?  Did it only look simple from outside and far away?  And was it, close, mere drudging?  A fear came over her that her soul, her precious soul, for whose sake she had dared everything, instead of being able to spread its wings in the light of a glorious clear life was going to be choked out of existence by weeds just as completely as at Kunitz.

The Shuttleworth kitchenmaid meanwhile, who was not hindered at every turn by a regard for her soul, made her way to Fritzing as she had been told and inquired of him what she should cook for his dinner.  No man likes to be interrupted in his groanings; and Fritzing, who was not hungry and was startled by the sudden appearance of a stranger in his room asking him intimate questions, a person of whose presence in the cottage he had been unaware, flew at her.  “Woman, what have I to do with you?” he cried, stopping in his walk and confronting her with surprising fierceness.  “Is it seemly to burst in on a man like this?  Have you no decency?  No respect for another’s privacy?  Begone, I command you—­begone!  Begone!” And he made the same movements with his hands that persons do when they shoo away fowls or other animals in flocks.