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Maper's daughter-in-law appealed to her, and she laughed to herself in soft duet with the music. And in the middle of the duet Mrs. Maper herself burst in, with her bodice half hooked and her hair half done. "What's this I hear, Miss Hirish Himpudence, of your goings-on with my son?" Eileen swung round on her stool. "I beg your pardon," she said.
She opened her windows and studied the drop and the odd bits of helpful rainpipe. Descent was not so easy as she had imagined. However, there would be time to think properly when she had packed her big box. Half an hour passed cheerfully in the folding of dresses to an underplay of planned escapes, and she had just locked the box, when Mrs. Maper's voice pierced the door panel.
Then she found some of the melodies of the drawing room scores wedded to life and diverting action, sometimes even to poetic dancing; the first gleam of poetry the stage gave her. When these airs were lively, Mrs. Maper's feet beat time and Eileen lived in the fear that she would arise and prance in her box.
It was an effervescence of joyous life the factory girl recrudescent and Eileen's hand would lie lightly on Mrs. Maper's shoulder, feeling like a lid over a kettle about to boil. When they came home Eileen would gratify her mistress by imitations of comedians. Presently she ventured on the tragedians, without being seen through.
This proved to be the case, and put the seal upon Eileen's enjoyment of the situation. To spend her evening in Mrs. Maper's box was indeed a climax. She borrowed theatre-paper and scribbled a note to her ex-employer, giving the address for her trunk. An orange and some biscuits sufficed for her dinner. Not till she was in her little bedroom, surrounded by pious texts, did she break down in tears.
While packing her big box, she had decided to try to lodge that night with a programme-girl she had got to know at the Theatre Royal, and the motive that set her pace was the desire to find her before she had started for the theatre. The girl usually hovered about Mrs. Maper's box. Once Eileen had asked her why she wasn't in evidence the week before.
"Oh, you can't get out of it by beggin' my pardon, creepin' into the library like a mouse and it's a nice sly mouse you are, too, but there's never a mouse without its cat " "She'd have done better to do your hair and mind her business," said Eileen, calmly. Mrs. Maper's forefinger shot heavenwards. "It was you as ought to have minded your business.
You know the next step hot water. What a lot you would have got into, too!" "You are thinking of my mother?" "Yes, raising Cain, I think you said once. Oh, dear, swim about and be thankful." And a vision of Mrs. Maper's amazement twitched the corners of her lips and made them more enchanting. "I'm not so cold-blooded as all that.
"And where will you sleep?" But Eileen now felt she must obey her own voice the voice of her outraged pride, perhaps even of Brian Boru himself. "Good-by. I'll take some things in a handbag and send for my box in the morning." Mrs. Maper's hand pointed to the ceiling. "And is that the way you treat a lady you're no lady, I tell you that. I demand a month's notice or I shall summons you."
Maper's brain had received an indelible impression. One Sunday afternoon a friendly orthoepical difference of this nature arose even as Mrs. Maper sat in her palatial drawing room waiting for callers, and they repaired to the library, Mrs. Maper arguing the point with loud good humour. A glass door giving by corkscrew iron steps on the garden, banged hurriedly as they made their chattering entry.
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