“Do I see Jenny again now?”

Rosamond shook her head.

“Better not, I think. If she is too excited she won’t sleep. Can you really come back in the morning?”

“Oh yes. What time shall I make it? Ten-half past?”

As they went back towards the hall, she gave a sudden soft laugh.

“Are you really related to those Lesters?”

“I really am.”

“And do you know exactly how? Because Aunt Lydia will certainly cross-examine you. She knows everybody’s family tree much better than they do themselves.”

He laughed.

“I’m word perfect. My grandfather was a brother of old Sir Roger Lester’s. The present man is my cousin Christopher.”

She had opened the front door and was saying, “If you turn left at the foot of the drive, the village is not much more than a quarter of a mile. The name is Hazel Green, and the inn is the Holly Tree. Mrs. Stubbs is a pet,” when he broke in after the manner of someone who has not been listening.

“Do you dust all that damned china?”

When she thought about it afterwards it occurred to her that she ought to have snubbed him. Rosamond wasn’t very good at snubbing people. She said in an apologetic voice,

“The daily women aren’t careful enough. Aunt Lydia wouldn’t trust them.”

There was quite a cold air coming in, but neither of them felt it. He said with anger,

“Do you know what I would like to do? I’d like to put all that stuff in the middle of the floor and smash it with the poker!”

And all she did was to look at him and say, “Why?”

He obliged with a copious answer.

“Because you’re a slave to it. There isn’t a speck of dust on the wretched stuff, or anywhere else that I could see. And who does the dusting? You every time! And mind you, I know about dusting. My sister and I had to help at home. My father died, and the first thing my mother did was to get rid of practically all that sort of stuff. She said there wouldn’t be anyone to do anything except ourselves, and she wasn’t planning for us to be slaves to a lot of irrelevant crockery, so she made a clean sweep of it. This house is cluttered till you can’t move, and you’re worn to a shadow trying to cope with it.”