XIII

The next day Maryllia was up betimes, and directly after breakfast she sent for Mrs. Spruce.  That good lady, moved by the summons into sudden trepidation, lest some duty had been forgotten, or some clause of the household ‘rules and regulations’ left unfulfilled, hastened to the inner library, a small octagonal room communicating with the larger apartment, and there found her mistress sitting on a low stool, with her lap full of visiting-cards which she was busily sorting.

“Spruce!” and she looked up from her occupation with a mock tragic air—­“I’m dull!  Positively D U double L!  Dull!”

Mrs. Spruce stared,—­but merely said: 

“Lor, Miss!” and folded her hands on her apron, awaiting the next word.

“I’m dull, dull, dull!” repeated Maryllia, springing up and tossing all the cards into a wide wicker basket near at hand—­“I don’t know what to do with myself, Spruce!  I’ve got nobody to talk to, nobody to play with, nobody to sing to, nobody to amuse me at all, at all!  I’ve seen everything inside and outside the Manor,—­I’ve visited the church,—­I know the village—­I’ve talked to dear old Josey Letherbarrow till he must be just tired of me,—­he’s certainly the cleverest man in the place,—­and yesterday the Pippitts came and finished me.  I’m done!  I throw up the sponge!—­that’s slang, Spruce!  There’s nobody to see, nowhere to go, nothing to do.  It’s awful!  ‘The time is out of joint, O cursed spite!’ That’s Hamlet.  Something must happen, Spruce!”—­and here she executed a playful pas-seul around the old housekeeper—­“There!  Isn’t that pretty?  Don’t look so astonished!—­you’ll see ever so much worse than that by and bye!  I am going to have company.  I am, really!  I shall fill the house!  Get all the beds aired, and all the bedrooms swept out!  I shall ask heaps of people,—­all the baddest, maddest folks I can find!  I want to be bad and mad myself!  There’s nobody bad or mad enough to keep me going down here.  Look at these!” And she raked among the visiting-cards and selected a few.  “Listen!—­’Miss Ittlethwaite, Miss Agnes Ittlethwaite, Miss Barbara Ittlethwaite, Miss Christina Ittlethwaite, Ittlethwaite Park.’  It makes my tongue all rough and funny to read their names!  They’ve called,—­and I suppose I shall have to call back, but I don’t want to.  What’s the good?  I’m sure I never shall get on with the Ittlethwaites,—­we shall never, never agree!  Do you know them, Spruce?  Who are they?”

Mrs. Spruce drew a long breath, rolled up her eyes, and began: 

“Which the Misses Ittlethwaite is a county fam’ly, Miss, livin’ some seven or eight miles from here as proud as proud, owin’ to their forebears ‘avin’ sworn death on Magnum Chartus for servin’ of King John—­an’ Miss Ittlethwaite proper, she be gettin’ on in years, but she’s a great huntin’ lady, an’ come November is allus to be seen follerin’