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architect chimed in for he was proud of his plans, “that is really impracticable — how are you to get the necessary bedrooms and offices? And, besides, no one nowadays wants such big rooms to heat.”
    “Then I shall have to have the ground-floor flat for myself,” said Letty. She had been undecided as to which of the four projected flats she should choose. At first she thought lovingly of the night nursery for her bedroom, but the rest of the top-floor rooms which had been the servants’ were decidedly poky and the stairs, too, might prove a disadvantage with increasing age. Then she favoured the basement for its direct access to the garden, but much of this was rather dark and had fewer friendly associations so, although Mr Donovan again sadly shook his head and said she was sacrificing the most financially promising return of the whole project, it seemed that the dining-room and drawing-room (grand and august as she still held them in memory) would become her living-room and bedroom, and she would squeeze both a bathroom and kitchen and a second little bedroom out of the old cloakroom and the study, to the poor architect’s distress.
    Meanwhile communications were crossing and recrossing oceans and continents. Letty wrote a personal letter and got a friendly reply from Jack’s son. He and his boys worked a profitable ranch and had no intention of coming back to the old country. His father, too, he felt sure, had not contemplated returning, but had never brought himself to sell the Lotus House for purely sentimental reasons. Now, however, he himself was anxious to be rid of the property. It would have been different if his auntshad lived, but the younger had not long survived the transplanting from England, he did not even remember her, and his Aunt Mary had died some years before his father. Of his Aunt Rosamund he knew nothing but believed she was living somewhere in the wilds of Canada. He was glad that the house should go to an old friend of the family as he felt sure this would have pleased his father and aunts.
    So that is that, thought Letty. She was not sure whether she was glad or sorry that she was to know so little about those unreal characters — the Lotus House children grown up. She had had some qualms about whether she ought to have mentioned the discovery of the doll’s house, but now she decided she could count it in with “the articles contained within the house and the garden at the time of the sale”. Six months later, after having disposed of her Bournemouth house satisfactorily, old Mrs Sanderson moved herself into the ground-floor flat of the Lotus House and set about looking for tenants.

CHAPTER THREE
    MRS SANDERSON DID not admit to herself that she was influenced in Mrs Royce’s favour by the colour of her hair, which was of that warm auburn hue that she had admired above all others ever since she had fallen in love with Rosamund long ago. Nor indeed was it necessary, for there was much else to be said in favour of this, her earliest applicant for the first floor flat. She had a charming smile, was beautifully dressed and was suitably enthusiastic about the whole house.
    “I’m always very sensitive to houses, Mrs Sanderson,” said Margot Royce, “and yours has such character. You’re an answer to prayer, you know. I’ve been feeling I simply couldn’t stand our poky little cottage any longer and this is perfect — two good living-rooms, one quite big enough to take Andrew’s piano, it’s only a baby grand but it’s crowded out our present sitting-room. I must warn you he plays on it quite a lot, I do hope you don’t object.”
    “No,” said Letty, hoping the other tenants, when they had materialized, would not do so either, but the walls and ceilings were pretty soundproof, not like modern houses, and anyway, nowadays people were so used to background music of all kinds. So she added that she was fond of music, though she was afraid she did not know much about