Maggie.  I hear them a coming in, master.

[Emily, holding the hands of Jessie and Robin, comes into the room.  Her eyes fall on Thomas who is standing between Clara and Maggie, looking suddenly sheepish and nervous.

Emily. [In a voice of suppressed anger.] Thomas!  O, if I catch any more of these goings on in my kitchen.

[Joan, very elegantly dressed and hanging on the arm of miles Hooper, follows Emily into the room.

Emily.  I’ll not have the food kept back any longer for Luke Jenner.  If folk can’t come to the time when they’re asked, they baint worth waiting for, so sit you down, all of you.

[She sits down at the head of the table, a child on either side of her.  Joan languidly sinks into a chair and miles puts himself at her right.  A place at her left remains empty.  Thomas sits opposite.  Three places at the end of the table are left vacant.  As they sit down, George, wearing a new smock and neck handkerchief, comes in.

Emily. [Beginning to help a dish.] You need not think you’re to be helped first, Clara, for all that the party is given for you, like.  The poor little children have been kept waiting a sad time for their supper, first because you was such a while a having your head curled and puffed out, and then ’twas Luke Jenner as didn’t come.

[Clara sits down at a place at the end of the table.  George and Maggie still remain standing.

Emily. [Perceiving Clara’s movement.] Well, I never did see anything so forward.  Who told you to sit yourself down along of your betters, if you please, madam serving maid?

[George comes involuntarily forward and stands behind Clara’s chair.  Clara does not move.

Emily.  Get you out of that there place this instant, do you hear? [Turning to miles.] To see the way the young person acts one might think as she fancied herself as something uncommon rare and high.  But you’ll not take any fool in, not you, for all that you like to play the fine lady.  Us can see through your game very clear, can’t us, Mr. Hooper?

Miles.  O certainly, to be sure, Missis Spring.  No one who has the privilege of being acquainted with a real lady of quality could be mistook by any of the games played by this young person.

[Clara looks him gravely in the face without moving.

Emily.  Get up, do you hear, and help Maggie pass the dishes!

Thomas. [Nervously.] Nay, nay, ’twas my doing, Emily.  I did tell the wenches as they might sit their-selves along of we, just for th’ occasion like.

Emily.  And who are you, if you please, giving orders and muddling about like a lord in my kitchen?

Thomas. [Faintly.] Come, Emily, I’m the master.