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china and too much furniture and her work was never done. It was so long since anyone had cared whether she was tired or not that she was shaken, but not with anger. She felt a weakness and a warmth, and got no nearer to an answer than a faint tremulous smile.
    He said, “Why do you do it?” and she lifted her head and spoke gently.
    “Most women have a good deal to do in their houses nowadays, you know. It doesn’t hurt one to be tired at the end of a day’s work.”
    “It hurts to be given a hopeless task and keep at it till it breaks you! Three quarters of that stuff should be put away! Why don’t you say so and go on strike until it’s done?”
    The smile was gone. She straightened herself a little.
    “Please, please—you mustn’t. My aunt has been most kind in taking Jenny in, and it has meant everything for her. We really had no claim. Anything I can do in return—”
    “I know, I know—and it’s not my business, and all the rest of the conventionalities! Let’s take them as said and get down to brass tacks. It is really impossible for you to have a sensible talk with Miss Crewe? After all, she can probably remember how many women it used to take to do what she expects you to take on single-handed.”
    “It was a different world, a different life. She hasn’t the least idea how long anything takes to do. There was a cook, and a kitchenmaid, and a between maid, and a woman up from the village three times a week to scrub, and a butler, and a parlourmaid, and two housemaids. And everything went like clockwork.”
    “She tells you all that, and she can’t see?”
    “No, she really can’t. She just thinks they were lazy and overpaid, and that there is no entertaining now, so of course it is all quite easy.”
    A light shiver went over her.
    He said impulsively, “You’re cold—I mustn’t keep you. But I haven’t said anything like all I’m going to.”
    A big warm hand swallowed hers up, held it a moment, and then let go. He went out on to the porch, and down the steps, and into his car and drove away.
    CHAPTER 4
    Mrs. Stubbs’ cooking was all that Miss Crewe had said. The parlour at the Holly Tree was warm and bright and comfortable—old leather chairs well broken in, a red tablecloth to replace the white one when his meal had been cleared away, and a row of fascinating objects on the shelf over the fireplace. Craig sat gazing at them and considering how much he preferred this homely warmth and comfort to the dreary bygone grandeurs of Crewe House. Sèvres and ormolu were all very well in their time and place, but for everyday fireside comfort give him the yellow cow with a lid in her back which was really a cream-jug, the milk being put in at the lid and pouring out of the mouth; the cup and saucer of copper lustre with its bands of raised fruits and flowers on a ground of bright sky blue; the mug with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in lilac and grey, the Great Exhibition in the background, and the date 1851 displayed in silver. There were also some rather intriguing wooden candlesticks with what looked like little heaps of cannon-balls piled at the four corners of the base, and a tall pottery jar with a picture of a khaki-clad soldier of the South African War and the dates 1899-1901. Below on either side of the hearth there were two very large pink shells which took him back to his boyhood, when he used to stand in front of a dreadful little muddle-shop which he passed on his way to school, looking in and coveting just such another pair.
    Mrs. Stubbs came in, hoped he had everything to his liking, and stayed for a cosy little chat. The shells were brought back by a great-uncle who had taken to the sea. The cow and the lustre cup and saucer had come down from her great-grandmother. “And I don’t hold with all this throwing out and putting in a lot of silly rubbish. New it may be, and the fashion it may be, but I don’t hold with it. When the young people come in they can do as they