Edmund's round face was very serious as he followed Mrs. Methuen back to the bedroom. Aunt Esperance, as he always put it, "was away." Aunt Esperance, who had seemed a necessary part of life—beneficent, immutable, inevitable. Yet she had gone, and her place knew her no more. Might not a like thing happen to Mr. Wycherly? And, if so, what was to become of him and Montagu?
Edmund was not imaginative. He lived his jolly life wholly without thought of the morrow. But at that moment he was startled into a realisation of how much he loved his guardian.
As once more he and Mrs. Methuen mounted their two chairs and started to put up the curtains again he looked across at her and noted with a sudden painful contraction of the heart that her face was very grave.
"You don't think, do you," he asked in a low voice, "that Guardie is going to die?"
Mrs. Methuen started and nearly dropped the curtain. "Oh, dear, no," she exclaimed hastily; "but you must take more care of him and not let him lift books or anything of that sort. When people are not very young they have to take things easily. You and Montagu must unpack the books and he can arrange them, but you must not let him stoop over the cases. Do you understand? He mustn't do it."
They finished the curtains in no time, and when Mrs. Methuen went back to the study Mr. Wycherly hastily arose from the sofa, where he had lain obediently ever since she put him there.
"I don't know how to thank you," he began——
"Please don't try," Mrs. Methuen said briskly. "The boys and I are having such fun, but I'm sorry to say that I must—I simply must—give you a little lecture. Boys! someone is knocking at the front door; go down and see who it is while I scold Mr. Wycherly."
Mrs. Methuen's own kitchen-maid, accompanied by a stout, fresh-coloured woman, carrying a large brown-paper parcel, were at the door, and Mrs. Methuen herself came down in a minute or two, when she explained that the rosy woman was one Mrs. Dew, that she had come "to look after them," and would stay with them till they got a proper servant. Moreover, the kitchen-maid carried a large basket of provisions. The fires had gone out in both kitchen and dining-room, and the evening was growing chill. That kitchen-maid lit both in no time. Mr. Wycherly was brought downstairs and installed in his big chair by the dining-room fire, and Mrs. Methuen went home. Yet once more she came back that night, and she swept the two boys up to their room and insisted on their putting all their clothes in drawers and cupboards under her supervision, and she and Mrs. Dew did the same by Mr. Wycherly without informing him of the fact.
Nothing could less have resembled the methods of Mrs. Griffin than those of Mrs. Dew. With her advent everything was changed at the house in Holywell. Order was evolved out of chaos, dust disappeared as if by magic, boxes were unpacked and removed empty to the attic, while, most important of all, meals were punctual and appetising.