Miss Rodney never wasted time, and in matters of business had cultivated a notable brevity.  Her interview with Mrs. Turpin, when she engaged the rooms, occupied perhaps a quarter of an hour; in that space of time she had sufficiently surveyed the house, had learnt all that seemed necessary as to its occupants, and had stated in the clearest possible way her present requirements.

‘As a matter of course,’ was her closing remark, ’the rooms will be thoroughly cleaned before I come in.  At present they are filthy.’

The landlady was too much astonished to reply; Miss Rodney’s tones and bearing had so impressed her that she was at a loss for her usual loquacity, and could only stammer respectfully broken answers to whatever was asked.  Assuredly no one had ever dared to tell her that her lodgings were ’filthy’—­any ordinary person who had ventured upon such an insult would have been overwhelmed with clamorous retort.  But Miss Rodney, with a pleasant smile and nod, went her way, and Mrs. Turpin stood at the open door gazing after her, bewildered ’twixt satisfaction and resentment.

She was an easy-going, wool-witted creature, not ill-disposed, but sometimes mendacious and very indolent.  Her life had always been what it was now—­one of slatternly comfort and daylong gossip, for she came of a small tradesman’s family, and had married an artisan who was always in well-paid work.  Her children were two daughters, who, at seventeen and fifteen, remained in the house with her doing little or nothing, though they were supposed to ‘wait upon the lodgers.’  For some months only two of the four rooms Mrs. Turpin was able to let had been occupied, one by ’young Mr. Rawcliffe,’ always so called, though his age was nearly thirty, but, as was well known, he belonged to the ‘real gentry,’ and Mrs. Turpin held him in reverence on that account.  No matter for his little weaknesses—­of which evil tongues, said Mrs. Turpin, of course made the most.  He might be irregular in payment; he might come home ‘at all hours,’ and make unnecessary noise in going upstairs; he might at times grumble when his chop was ill-cooked; and, to tell the truth, he might occasionally be ’a little too free’ with the young ladies—­that is to say, with Mabel and Lily Turpin; but all these things were forgiven him because he was ’a real gentleman,’ and spent just as little time as he liked daily in a solicitor’s office.

Miss Rodney arrived early on Saturday afternoon.  Smiling and silent, she saw her luggage taken up to the bedroom; she paid the cabman; she beckoned her landlady into the parlour, which was on the ground-floor front.

‘You haven’t had time yet, Mrs. Turpin, to clean the rooms?’

The landlady stammered a half-indignant surprise.  Why, she and her daughters had given the room a thorough turn out.  It was done only yesterday, and hours had been devoted to it.

‘I see,’ interrupted Miss Rodney, with quiet decision, ’that our notions of cleanliness differ considerably.  I’m going out now, and I shall not be back till six o’clock.  You will please to clean the bedroom before then.  The sitting-room shall be done on Monday.’