At a quarter to nine a shrill, jangling bell rang out and Maggie hurried down the dark staircase.She did not know where the dining-room was, but by good chance she caught sight of Aunt Elizabeth's little body moving hurriedly down the passage and hastened after her.She arrived only just in time.There, standing in a row before four chairs, their faces red and shining, their hands folded in front of them, were the domestics; there, with a little high desk in front of her, on the other side of the long dining-room table was Aunt Anne; here, near the door, were two chairs obviously intended for Aunt Elizabeth and Maggie.
Maggie in her haste pushed the door, and it banged loudly behind her; in the silent room the noise echoed through the house.It was followed by a piercing scream from Edward, whom, Maggie concluded, it had awakened.All this confused her very much and gave her anything but a religious state of mind.
What followed resembled very much the ceremonies with which her father had been accustomed to begin the day, except that her father, with one eye on the bacon, had gabbled at frantic pace through the prayers and Aunt Anne read them very slowly and with great beauty.
She read from the Gospel of St.John: "These things I command you, that ye love one another..."; but the clear, sweet tones of her voice gave no conviction of a love for mankind.
Maggie looking from that pale remote face to the roughened cheeks and plump body of the kitchen-maid felt that here there could be no possible bond.When they knelt down she was conscious, as she had been since she was a tiny child, of two things--the upturned heels of the servants' boots and the discomfort to her own knees.These two facts had always hindered her religious devotions, and they hindered them now.There had always been to her something irresistibly comic in those upturned heels, the dull flat surfaces of these cheap shoes.In the kitchen-maid's there were the signs of wear; Martha's were new and shining; the house-maid's were smart and probably creaked abominably.The bodies above them sniffed and rustled and sighed.The vacant, stupid faces of the shoes were Aunt Anne's only audience.Maggie wondered what the owners of those shoes felt about the house.Had they a sense of irritation too or did they perhaps think about nothing at all save their food, their pay and their young man or their night out? The pain to her knees pierced her thoughts; the prayers were very long?--Aunt Anne's beautiful voice was interminable.