“You wouldn’t believe it, but Joyce makes her own clothes.”
Margot hadn’t a doubt of that, but she expressed suitable surprise and commendation. Sir Geoffrey changed the conversation.
The afternoon passed pleasantly. After tea Lionel went down to the river to try for a fish, a fat trout that defied capture. Lady Pomfret and Margot sat under the trees and talked. Sir Geoffrey stumped off to the Home Farm with Fishpingle.
By this time Margot had established intimacy with her host’s butler. She felt towards him as Lionel did to the fat trout. She wanted to land him, to weigh him, to hold him in her small hand. Mystery encompassed Fishpingle. She tried to read his history between the lines upon a discreet face. That was her method of learning French history from “mémoires à servir.” But Fishpingle eluded her. She could find him at any time in his room; he received her courteously; he talked delightfully about old plate, and birds, and Nether-Applewhite, but never, never of himself.
As the Squire and his faithful henchman walked off together, Margot said lightly:
“You have many precious possessions in your dear old house, but it seems to me that of all of them Fishpingle is the most priceless.”
Lady Pomfret became alert. At moments, Margot’s cleverness frightened her. Not her sprightliness in small talk. Lady Pomfret could discount that, and did. But the little lady exhibited, in flashes, powers of intuition and characterisation which were certainly remarkable.
“Tell me what you mean, my dear.”
“I speak of him as a possession. In the last few years I have had three butlers, each of them highly recommended. I pay a little more than is usual to my upper servants, because I want to keep them. And I think I am consistently nice to them. That pays, doesn’t it? And yet, to my intense annoyance, they leave me. They are not possessions, as they used to be. Fishpingle showed me that handsome inkstand. I was consumed with envy when I read the inscription—‘Fifty years’ service!’”
“He became page to Lady Alicia Pomfret when he was ten. His duties, I fancy, were not too onerous. She had him educated.”