“Oh, master said I was to show you everything you liked, miss—I mean, ma’am. It’s a dreadfully dark day to show you, but I’ve got the gas lit everywhere, and it does warm the house nicely and keep out the damp.”
Kate longed to ask the woman a few questions, but she shrank from speaking, and followed her pretty well all over the place until she stopped on the first floor landing before a heavy curtain which apparently veiled a window.
“I hope you find everything to your satisfaction, ma’am—that the house has been properly kept.”
“Everything I have seen shows the greatest care,” said Kate.
“Thank you, ma’am,” said the woman, and her next words aroused her companion’s attention at once, for the desire within her was strong to know more of her new guardian’s private life, though it would have been, she felt, impossible to question. “You see, master is here so very seldom that there is no encouragement for one to spend much time in cleaning and dusting, and oh, the times it has come to me like a wicked temptation to leave things till to-morrow; but I resisted, for I knew that if I did once, Becky would be sure to twice. You see, master is mostly at his other house when he isn’t at his offices, where he just has snacks and lunches brought in on trays; but it’s all going to be different now, he tells me, and the house is to be kept up properly, and very glad I am, for it has been like wilful waste for such a beautiful place never hardly to be used, and never a lady in it in my time.”
“Then Mrs Garstang did not reside here?”
“Oh, no, ma’am! nor old master’s lady neither—not in my time.”
“Mr Garstang’s father?”
“Oh, no, ma’am: Mr Jenour, who had it before master, and—and died here—I mean there,” said the woman, in a whisper, and she jerked her head toward the heavy curtain. “It was Mr Jenour’s place, and he collected all the books and china and foreign curiosities. I’ll tell you all about it some day, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” said Kate, quietly. “I will go down to the library now; I wish to write.”