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242 his and wish it transferred to me. I 'd knelt down to make a funeral pyre of paper roses, when in a voice low yet firm my brother ordered me to my feet. This was n't work for girls when men were about, he grumbled; and perhaps it was as well, for I never made a wood fire in my life. As for him, he might have been a fire-tamer, so quickly did the flames leap up and try to lick his hands. When it was certain that they couldn't go stealthily crawling away again, he shot from the room, and in two minutes was back with the big kettle of hot water under whose weight I should have staggered and fallen, perhaps.

By this time I had made the bed, and tumbled all reminders of the two "sympathetic messieurs" ruthlessly into no-man's land outside the door. Things began to look more cheerful. Lady Turnour brightened visibly; and when appetizing smells of cooking stole through the wide cracks all round the door she decided that, after all, she would dine.

It was not until after I had seen her descend with her husband, and had finished unpacking, that I had a chance to think of my own affairs. Then I did wonder on what shelf I was to lie, or on what hook hang, for the night. I had no information yet as regarded my own sleeping or eating, but both began to assume importance in my eyes, and I went down to learn my fate. Where was I to dine? Why, in the kitchen, to be sure, since the salle à manger was in use as a sitting-room until bedtime. As for sleeping—why, that was a difficult matter. It was true that the English milord had spoken of a room for me, but in the press of business it had been forgotten. What a pity that the chauffeur and I were not a married couple, n'est pas?