“The only servant I have, practically,” explained the clergyman, “cook, butler, housekeeper and tyrant all in one; and, with her niece, the only other persons in the house besides ourselves.  A very simple menage, you see, Mr. Spinrobin.  I ought to warn you, too, by-the-by,” he added, “that she is almost stone deaf, and has only got the use of one arm, as perhaps you noticed.  Her left arm is”—­he hesitated for a fraction of a second—­“withered.”

A passing wonder as to what the niece would be like accompanied the swallowing of his buttered toast and tea, but the personalities of Mr. Skale and his housekeeper had already produced emotions that prevented this curiosity acquiring much strength.  He could deal with nothing more just yet.  Bewilderment obstructed the way, and in his room before dinner he tried in vain to sort out the impressions that so thickly flooded him, though without any conspicuous degree of success.  The walls of his bedroom, like those of corridor and hall, were bare; the furniture solid and old-fashioned; scanty, perhaps, yet more than he was accustomed to; and the spaciousness was very pleasant after the cramped quarters of stuffy London lodgings.  He unpacked his few things, arranged them with neat precision in the drawers of the tallboy, counted his shirts, socks, and ties, to see that all was right, and then drew up an armchair and toasted his toes before the comforting fire.  He tried to think of many things, and to decide numerous little questions roused by the events of the last few hours; but the only thing, it seems, that really occupied his mind, was the rather overpowering fact that he was—­with Mr. Skale and in Mr. Skale’s house; that he was there on a month’s trial; that the nature of the work in which he was to assist was unknown, immense, singular; and that he was already being weighed in the balances by his uncommon and gigantic employer.  In his mind he used this very adjective.  There was something about the big clergyman—­titanic.

He was in the middle of a somewhat jumbled consideration about “Knowledge of Hebrew—­tenor voice—­courage and imagination—­unworldly,” and so forth, when a knock at the door announced Mrs. Mawle who came to inform him that dinner was ready.  She stood there, a motherly and pleasant figure in black, and she addressed him in the third person.  “If Mr. Spinrobin will please to come down,” she said, “Mr. Skale is waiting.  Mr. Skale is always quite punctual.”  She always spoke thus, in the third person; she never used the personal pronoun if it could be avoided.  She preferred the name direct, it seemed.  And as Spinrobin passed her on the way out, she observed further, looking straight into his eyes as she said it:  “and should Mr. Spinrobin have need of anything, that,” indicating it, “is the bell that rings in the housekeeper’s room.  Mrs. Mawle can see it wag, though she can’t hear it.  Day or night,” she added with a faint curtsey, “and no trouble at all, just as with the other gentlemen—­”