“I’ll take my oath on it, and so would Saunders here; wouldn’t you, old chap?”

“Any number of oaths,” said Saunders.  “It was a long thin hand, you know, and it gripped me just like that.”

“Don’t Mr. Saunders!  Don’t!  How perfectly horrid!  Now tell us another one, do.  Only a really creepy one, please!”

* * * * *

“Here’s a pretty mess!” said Eustace on the following day as he threw a letter across the table to Saunders.  “It’s your affair, though.  Mrs. Merrit, if I understand it, gives a month’s notice.”

“Oh, that’s quite absurd on Mrs. Merrit’s part,” Saunders replied.  “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.  Let’s see what she says.”

“DEAR SIR,” he read, “this is to let you know that I must give you a month’s notice as from Tuesday the 13th.  For a long time I’ve felt the place too big for me, but when Jane Parfit, and Emma Laidlaw go off with scarcely as much as an ‘if you please,’ after frightening the wits out of the other girls, so that they can’t turn out a room by themselves or walk alone down the stairs for fear of treading on half-frozen toads or hearing it run along the passages at night, all I can say is that it’s no place for me.  So I must ask you, Mr. Borlsover, sir, to find a new housekeeper that has no objection to large and lonely houses, which some people do say, not that I believe them for a minute, my poor mother always having been a Wesleyan, are haunted.

“Yours faithfully,
ELIZABETH MERRIT.

“P.S.—­I should be obliged if you would give my respects to Mr. Saunders.  I hope that he won’t run no risks with his cold.”

“Saunders,” said Eustace, “you’ve always had a wonderful way with you in dealing with servants.  You mustn’t let poor old Merrit go.”

“Of course she shan’t go,” said Saunders.  “She’s probably only angling for a rise in salary.  I’ll write to her this morning.”

“No; there’s nothing like a personal interview.  We’ve had enough of town.  We’ll go back to-morrow, and you must work your cold for all it’s worth.  Don’t forget that it’s got on to the chest, and will require weeks of feeding up and nursing.”

“All right.  I think I can manage Mrs. Merrit.”

But Mrs. Merrit was more obstinate than he had thought.  She was very sorry to hear of Mr. Saunders’s cold, and how he lay awake all night in London coughing; very sorry indeed.  She’d change his room for him gladly, and get the south room aired.  And wouldn’t he have a basin of hot bread and milk last thing at night?  But she was afraid that she would have to leave at the end of the month.

“Try her with an increase of salary,” was the advice of Eustace.

It was no use.  Mrs. Merrit was obdurate, though she knew of a Mrs. Handyside who had been housekeeper to Lord Gargrave, who might be glad to come at the salary mentioned.

“What’s the matter with the servants, Morton?” asked Eustace that evening when he brought the coffee into the library.  “What’s all this about Mrs. Merrit wanting to leave?”