"I'll give you three hundred pounds for the lot," I said, handing over the list.
"No," remarked the eldest firmly. "Dear me no!" I prepared for the duel of bargaining. "Two hundred and fifty will be ample. We cannot think of taking advantage of one who has come here in answer to our prayers." The sisters nodded an emphatic endorsement, and I realised it was useless to argue with them. They asked, as a great favour, that the van which took the furniture away should attend at an early hour in the morning, before Crooms Hill was awake. "We don't wish," they pleaded, "to be the subject of gossip." They gave me a new prayer book, and I came away with the feeling that one had peeped into a world too good for a business person.
The young doctor was well satisfied with the transaction. He told me his fiancée said she had always known that his taste and selection could be depended upon, and he thanked me warmly for my assistance. To the milkman I presented five one pound notes signed by John Bradbury, Secretary to the Treasury, and when he realised that the notes were genuine and that he was not being made the target for a practical joke, he declared I was a lady well worth knowing, assured me that any information he possessed concerning the inside of residences at Greenwich would always be at my disposal.
The telegram informing us that Master John and my Herbert were leaving for the front arrived one morning when the working members of the family in Gloucester Place had gone off to their respective duties. A few hints had come before, but this information was definite.
"We shall have to hurry, ma'am." Mrs. Hillier was taking breakfast in bed. "There's no time to lose. Bustle about!"
"You are asking me to do something, Weston, altogether foreign to my nature."
"I very often wonder, ma'am, what can happen that will rouse you up thoroughly. There seemed a possibility that it was going to happen at Chislehurst but it passed off."
"With so much turmoil and excitement," she said, serenely, "going on around me, I feel it my duty to give an example of—"
"We must be out of this house in half an hour's time."