Away then ran the housemaid and Menlove, and the young footman started at their heels. Round the room, over the furniture, under the furniture, through the furniture, out of one window, along the balcony, in at another window, again round the room--so they glided with the swiftness of swallows and the noiselessness of ghosts.
Then the housemaid drew a jew's-harp from her pocket, and struck up a lively waltz sotto voce. The footman seized Menlove, who appeared nothing loth, and began spinning gently round the room with her, to the time of the fascinating measure 'Which fashion hails, from countesses to queens, And maids and valets dance behind the scenes.'
Picotee, who had been accustomed to unceiled country cottages all her life, wherein the scamper of a mouse is heard distinctly from floor to floor, exclaimed in a terrified whisper, at viewing all this, 'They'll hear you underneath, they'll hear you, and we shall all be ruined!'
'Not at all,' came from the cautious dancers. 'These are some of the best built houses in London--double floors, filled in with material that will deaden any row you like to make, and we make none. But come and have a turn yourself, Miss Chickerel.'
The young man relinquished Menlove, and on the spur of the moment seized Picotee. Picotee flounced away from him in indignation, backing into a corner with ruffled feathers, like a pullet trying to appear a hen.
'How dare you touch me!' she said, with rounded eyes. 'I'll tell somebody downstairs of you, who'll soon see about it!'
'What a baby; she'll tell her father.'
'No I shan't; somebody you are all afraid of, that's who I'll tell.'
'Nonsense,' said Menlove; 'he meant no harm.'
Playtime was now getting short, and further antics being dangerous on that account, the performers retired again downstairs, Picotee of necessity following. Her nerves were screwed up to the highest pitch of uneasiness by the grotesque habits of these men and maids, who were quite unlike the country servants she had known, and resembled nothing so much as pixies, elves, or gnomes, peeping up upon human beings from their shady haunts underground, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill--sometimes doing heavy work, sometimes none;teasing and worrying with impish laughter half suppressed, and vanishing directly mortal eyes were bent on them. Separate and distinct from overt existence under the sun, this life could hardly be without its distinctive pleasures, all of them being more or less pervaded by thrills and titillations from games of hazard, and the perpetual risk of sensational surprises.
Long before this time Picotee had begun to be anxious to get home again, but Menlove seemed particularly to desire her company, and pressed her to sit awhile, telling her young friend, by way of entertainment, of various extraordinary love adventures in which she had figured as heroine when travelling on the Continent. These stories had one and all a remarkable likeness in a certain point--Menlove was always unwilling to love the adorer, and the adorer was always unwilling to live afterwards on account of it.
'Ha-ha-ha!' in men's voices was heard from the distant dining-room as the two women went on talking.
'And then,' continued Menlove, 'there was that duel I was the cause of between the courier and the French valet. Dear me, what a trouble that was; yet I could do nothing to prevent it. This courier was a very handsome man--they are handsome sometimes.'
'Yes, they are. My aunt married one.'
'Did she? Where do they live?'
'They keep an hotel at Rouen,' murmured Picotee, in doubt whether this should have been told or not.
