CHAPTER XXIII
A month passed quickly away. Almost every day McTaggart's car drew up at the house near Primrose Hill, and Jill and Roddy joyfully mounted in it, with an occasional fourth in the shape of Aunt Elizabeth. Then off they went out of London into the cooler country air, a trio of gay explorers armed with maps and a pic-nic hamper.
Such cakes! For Mrs. Belsey had fallen a victim to Roddy's charms, his wheedling voice and jolly laugh and "Cookie—just one jam-puff?"
Miss Uniacke, too, had thoroughly enjoyed what she was pleased to call her "bounden duty."
From attic to cellar the musty old house had been turned literally inside out. For the invalid had improved at a surprisingly quick rate. No longer the household moved on tiptoe. Good food and the sense of all responsibility shelved on to the shoulders of the capable little old maid; her careful nursing and cheerful common sense had gone far to hasten the cure.
With her two devoted well-trained servants and a charwoman (forbidden "chatter!") Aunt Elizabeth had probed into every hole and corner.
The episode of the dead mouse (in a disused cupboard under the stairs) had proved the culminating point in her campaign against disorder.
Jill had been summoned to find her Aunt, rigid, holding between finger and thumb the tail of the moral offender: not unlike a small rodent herself, with her sharp nose and pointed chin framed in a grey check duster.
Her brown fringe was frankly awry, her grey eyes had steely points.
"Look at that!—I've a great mind to take it straight to your Mother. I wonder you haven't all had typhoid! That's what comes of a dirty house!"—she scoffed—"she really ought to know."