It was a great day for Jane Cupp when her mother arrived at Palstrey Manor.  It was a great day for Mrs. Cupp also.  When she descended from the train at the little country station, warm and somewhat flushed by her emotions and the bugled splendours of her best bonnet and black silk mantle, the sight of Jane standing neatly upon the platform almost overcame her.  Being led to his lordship’s own private bus, and seeing her trunk surrounded by the attentions of an obsequious station-master and a liveried young man, she was conscious of concealing a flutter with dignified reserve.

“My word, Jane!” she exclaimed after they had taken their seats in the vehicle.  “My word, you look as accustomed to it as if you had been born in the family.”

But it was when, after she had been introduced to the society in the servants’ hall, she was settled in her comfortable room next to Jane’s own that she realised to the full that there were features of her position which marked it with importance almost startling.  As Jane talked to her, the heat of the genteel bonnet and beaded mantle had nothing whatever to do with the warmth which moistened her brow.

“I thought I’d keep it till I saw you, mother,” said the girl decorously.  “I know what her ladyship feels about being talked over.  If I was a lady myself, I shouldn’t like it.  And I know how deep you’ll feel it, that when the doctor advised her to get an experienced married person to be at hand, she said in that dear way of hers, ’Jane, if your uncle could spare your mother, how I should like to have her.  I’ve never forgot her kindness in Mortimer Street.’”

Mrs. Cupp fanned her face with a handkerchief of notable freshness.

“If she was Her Majesty,” she said, “she couldn’t be more sacred to me, nor me more happy to be allowed the privilege.”

Jane had begun to put her mother’s belongings away.  She was folding and patting a skirt on the bed.  She fussed about a little nervously and then lifted a rather embarrassed face.

“I’m glad you are here, mother,” she said.  “I’m thankful to have you!”

Mrs. Cupp ceased fanning and stared at her with a change of expression.  She found herself involuntarily asking her next question in a half whisper.

“Why, Jane, what is it?”

Jane came nearer.

“I don’t know,” she answered, and her voice also was low.  “Perhaps I’m silly and overanxious, because I am so fond of her.  But that Ameerah, I actually dream about her.”

“What!  The black woman?”,

“If I was to say a word, or if you did, and we was wrong, how should we feel?  I’ve kept my nerves to myself till I’ve nearly screamed sometimes.  And my lady would be so hurt if she knew.  But—­well,” in a hurried outburst, “I do wish his lordship was here, and I do wish the Osborns wasn’t.  I do wish it, I tell you that.”

“Good Lord!” cried Mrs. Cupp, and after staring with alarmed eyes a second or so, she wiped a slight dampness from her upper lip.