with one foot on the stairs

'I shall be carried out if I go!' said the girl violently; 'and I can make that a job that two of you won't like to do. Isn't there anybody here,' she said, looking round, 'that will see a simple message carried for a poor wretch like me?' This appeal produced an effect on a good-tempered-faced man-cook, who with some of the other servants was looking on, and who stepped forward to interfere. 'Take it up for her, Joe; can't you?' said this person. 'What's the good?' replied the man. 'You don't suppose the young lady will see such as her; do you?' This allusion to Nancy's doubtful character, raised a vast quantity of chaste wrath in the bosoms of four housemaids, who remarked, with great fervour, that the creature was a disgrace to her sex; and strongly advocated her being thrown, ruthlessly, into the kennel. 'Do what you like with me,' said the girl, turning to the men again; 'but do what I ask you first, and I ask you to give this message for God Almighty's sake.' The soft-hearted cook added his intercession, and the result was that the man who had first appeared undertook its delivery. 'What's it to be?' said the man, with one foot on the stairs. 'That a young woman earnestly asks to speak to Miss Maylie alone,' said Nancy; 'and that if the lady will only hear the first word she has to say, she will know whether to hear her business, or to have her turned out of doors as an impostor.' 'I say,' said the man, 'you're coming it strong!' 'You give the message,' said the girl firmly; 'and let me hear the answer.'