“I thank you——” began the girl, and then hesitated. She had meant to declare that they wanted for nothing, perhaps to indicate that the wife of a tenant was hardly a fitting “first-foot” to venture over the threshold of a baronet of ancient name and of the sister who acted as his sponsor, tutor and governor.
But then Miss Irma did not know my grandmother as Eden Valley did, still less as we who were, as one might say, of Cæsar’s household.
“Let me come in—I will soon see for myself!” quoth my grandmother, and marched straight into the front hall of the Maitlands, that immense dusky cavern I had only once looked into over the pikes and pitchforks. She carried Sir Louis, tenth baronet of that name, on one arm. With her free right hand she went hither and thither, sweeping her hand along the ledges of great oak cabinets, blowing at the dust on the stone mantelpiece, and finally clearing the great curtained south-western window to let in the sun in flakes and patches of scarlet and gold.
Then she turned to Miss Irma and said in the tone of an expert who has inspected a grave piece of work and not found it wanting, “You have done very well, my dear!”
And at this Miss Irma changed the fashion of her countenance. Pleasure shone scarce concealed. It was certain that up to that moment she had regarded my grandmother somewhat in the light of an intruder, but she could not bear up against such an appeal from housewife to housewife.
“Will you come up-stairs?” she said, “I have hardly got begun here yet.”