Scrope found it difficult to guess at what was going on in the heads of his younger daughters.  None displayed such sympathy as Eleanor had confessed.  He had a feeling that his wife had schooled them to say nothing about the change in their fortunes to him.  But they quarrelled a good deal, he could hear, about the use of the one bathroom—­there was never enough hot water after the second bath.  And Miriam did not seem to enjoy playing the new upright piano in the drawing-room as much as she had done the Princhester grand it replaced.  Though she was always willing to play that thing he liked; he knew now that it was the Adagio of Of. 111; whenever he asked for it.

London servants, Lady Ella found, were now much more difficult to get than they had been in the Holy Innocents’ days in St. John’s Wood.  And more difficult to manage when they were got.  The households of the more prosperous clergy are much sought after by domestics of a serious and excellent type; an unfrocked clergyman’s household is by no means so attractive.  The first comers were young women of unfortunate dispositions; the first cook was reluctant and insolent, she went before her month was up; the second careless; she made burnt potatoes and cindered chops, underboiled and overboiled eggs; a “dropped” look about everything, harsh coffee and bitter tea seemed to be a natural aspect of the state of being no longer a bishop.  He would often after a struggle with his nerves in the bedroom come humming cheerfully to breakfast, to find that Phoebe, who was a delicate eater, had pushed her plate away scarcely touched, while Lady Ella sat at the end of the table in a state of dangerous calm, framing comments for delivering downstairs that would be sure to sting and yet leave no opening for repartee, and trying at the same time to believe that a third cook, if the chances were risked again, would certainly be “all right.”

The drawing-room was papered with a morose wallpaper that the landlord, in view of the fact that Scrope in his optimism would only take the house on a yearly agreement, had refused to replace; it was a design of very dark green leaves and grey gothic arches; and the apartment was lit by a chandelier, which spilt a pool of light in the centre of the room and splashed useless weak patches elsewhere.  Lady Ella had to interfere to prevent the monopolization of this centre by Phoebe and Daphne for their home work.  This light trouble was difficult to arrange; the plain truth was that there was not enough illumination to go round.  In the Princhester drawing-room there had been a number of obliging little electric pushes.  The size of the dining-room, now that the study was cut off from it, forbade hospitality.  As it was, with only the family at home, the housemaid made it a grievance that she could scarcely squeeze by on the sideboard side to wait.