"I expected it! Please have it got ready at once; and send some wine and biscuits, please."
A footman brought them, and Lady Wolfer poured some wine out for Nell.
"Oh, but you must! Heaven knows when we shall have lunch; they'll very likely consider that scramble downstairs as sufficient. But you'll see to all that for the future, won't you?"
"You must tell me, Lady Wolfer——" began Nell, but her ladyship, with a grimace, stopped her.
"My dear girl, I can't tell you anything, excepting that Lord Wolfer takes his breakfast early—not later than nine—is seldom in to lunch, and still less frequently at home to dinner; but when he does dine here, he dines at eight. The cook, who is, I believe, rather a decent sort of man, knows what Lord Wolfer likes, and you can't go very far wrong, I fancy, if you have a joint of roast beef or a leg of mutton on the menu; the rest doesn't matter."
Nell began to feel daunted. There was just a little too much carte blanche about it.
"And as to the other servants, why, there's an old person named Hubbard—Old Mother Hubbard, I call her—who is supposed to look after them."
Nell could not help smiling.
"I don't quite see where I come in," she remarked.
Lady Wolfer laughed.