"But why isn't your servant there to help you? It seems to me that just now is the time when she could be of the very greatest use."
"She was coming," Edmund said gloomily, "but her miserable mother went and got ill, and now she won't come at all, and there's only Mrs. Griffin. Do you know Mrs. Griffin?"
"I do not," Mrs. Methuen replied decidedly, "and from what I saw of her when she let me in, I don't desire her further acquaintance. How did you get her?"
"It was the man in the blue cotton jacket; we asked him, and he gave us a lot of names, but we chose Mrs. Griffin 'cause she lived so near and we liked her name. We got her, not Guardie."
"That, I should think, is a comforting reflection for Mr. Wycherly," Mrs. Methuen murmured; "but here we are. Now I'll take you in to see my baby and meanwhile I'll find some curtains and come back with you, and we'll put them up with tapes; that'll do anyway until Monday. You'll be well shrouded from the public gaze and can depress nobody—what a curious way to put it though."
"It was 'distressing,' not 'depressing,'" Montagu explained.
"Well, she depressed Guardie anyhow. I'll go into the attic when I get home, and if I can see the least little bit of her doing anything I'll write and complain."
"You won't be able to see," Montagu said sadly; "she sleeps at the top, and her house is higher than ours—I saw her open her window yesterday while I was in bed."
"You wait," said Edmund, wagging his curly head. "I bet you I'll see something somehow—and then I'll punish her for vexing Guardie."
"I expect she only meant to be kind," Mrs. Methuen suggested. "She probably realised that you, none of you, had thought of anyone seeing in."