“Then shall we go?” she suggested.

“Let me help you up,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, all consideration.

“Oh, thank you—­I can manage perfectly.  It’s only sometimes that my stick prevents me—­”

Mrs. Fisher got up quite easily; Mrs. Arbuthnot had hovered over her for nothing.

“I’m going to have one of these gorgeous oranges,” said Mrs. Wilkins, staying where she was and reaching across to a black bowl piled with them.  “Rose, how can you resist them.  Look—­have this one.  Do have this beauty—­” And she held out a big one.

“No, I’m going to see to my duties,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, moving towards the door.  “You’ll forgive me for leaving you, won’t you,” she added politely to Mrs. Fisher.

Mrs. Fisher moved towards the door too; quite easily; almost quickly; her stick did not hinder her at all.  She had no intention of being left with Mrs. Wilkins.

“What time would you like to have lunch?” Mrs. Arbuthnot asked her, trying to keep her head as at least a non-guest, if not precisely a hostess, above water.

“Lunch,” said Mrs. Fisher, “is at half-past twelve.”

“You shall have it at half-past twelve then,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.  “I’ll tell the cook.  It will be a great struggle,” she continued, smiling, “but I’ve brought a little dictionary—­”

“The cook,” said Mrs. Fisher, “knows.”

“Oh?” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“Lady Caroline has already told her,” said Mrs. Fisher.

“Oh?” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“Yes.  Lady Caroline speaks the kind of Italian cooks understand. 
I am prevented going into the kitchen because of my stick.  And even if
I were able to go, I fear I shouldn’t be understood.”

“But—­” began Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“But it’s too wonderful,” Mrs. Wilkins finished for her from the table, delighted with these unexpected simplifications in her and Rose’s lives.  “Why, we’ve got positively nothing to do here, either of us, except just be happy.  You wouldn’t believe,” she said, turning her head and speaking straight to Mrs. Fisher, portions of orange in either hand, “how terribly good Rose and I have been for years without stopping, and how much now we need a perfect rest.”

And Mrs. Fisher, going without answering her out the room, said to herself, “She must, she shall be curbed.”

Chapter 8

Presently, when Mrs. Wilkins and Mrs. Arbuthnot, unhampered by any duties, wandered out and down the worn stone steps and under the pergola into the lower garden, Mrs. Wilkins said to Mrs. Arbuthnot, who seemed pensive, “Don’t you see that if somebody else does the ordering it frees us?”

Mrs. Arbuthnot said she did see, but nevertheless she thought it rather silly to have everything taken out of their hands.

“I love things to be taken out of my hands,” said Mrs. Wilkins.