The dining-room door was ajar. A strip of light wavered against the darkness.
All this had happened before. If she entered the room, Mary was sure that her father would look up from the table and swear softly at her intrusion.
Of course he couldn't. He had died over ten years ago. Mary had seen him die, crying aloud that the mortgage, the mortgage, the mortgage had got him at last, and that she alone was left to fight it.
Her breath came quickly. There was a scraping sound, and somebody sighed heavily. She pushed open the door and went in.
Janet Holmes, in a voluminous quilted dressing-gown, knelt on the floor near the sideboard. Seeing Mary, she rose to her feet with greater alacrity than the Harrogate specialist would have thought possible but unfortunately in her haste she dropped a china biscuit jar that fell against the corner of the fender, breaking in a hundred fragments.
"Oh dear, oh dear! How you startled me!" she gasped.
"Is anything wrong?" asked Mary severely. The jar had been a relic of her mother's lifetime. It was old Spode, and Mary loved dearly the twisting blue flowers on its glazed surface. She regarded it ruefully.
"Oh dear! I'm so sorry. But you did startle me so. It just slipped out of my hand. I hope it was not of any great value, though with these things it's not what they cost, is it? It's the things they belonged to—I mean, you know since we went to the Grange—late dinner—my digestion—the doctor at Harrogate said 'Now, Mrs. Holmes, always take food one hour before retiring,' and I thought perhaps a biscuit——"
"Oh, I see."
Ten minutes elapsed before Mrs. Holmes could be consoled for the omission of late dinner, Mary's inopportune appearance, and the destruction of the biscuit jar. Mary escorted her to her room, and then returned to gather up the fragments.