She shook her head.  “I don’t think any of us would like that,” she said.  “But I daresay I have become too much of a Martha.”

She got up, feeling painfully afraid that she was going to cry again.  “I don’t see why I shouldn’t do as Timmy said—­change my apron, I mean, and go into the drawing-room.  For one thing, I should like to see Mrs. Crofton’s dress.  Tom says she looks a regular peach!  That’s his highest form of praise, you know.”

Radmore suddenly resolved to say something which had been on his mind of late.  “Don’t you think that Jack’s making rather a fool of himself over that pretty little lady?”

Betty looked across at him with the frank, direct gaze that he remembered so well.  “I’m afraid he is,” she answered.  “He and Janet had quite a row about her this morning.  He seemed to think we had been rude to her; he was most awfully huffy about it.  But I suppose saying anything only makes things worse in such a case, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t speak to her.  She and I know each other pretty well.  She was a desperate little flirt when I first knew her in Egypt.”  And then, as he saw a look cross her face to which he had no clue, he added hastily:—­“She’s quite all right, Betty.  She’s quite a straight little woman.”

“I’m sure she is,” said Betty cordially.

She was wondering, wondering, wondering what Godfrey really thought of Enid Crofton?  Whether or no there had been a touch of jealousy in what he had said about Jack just now?  He had said the words about Jack’s making a fool of himself very lightly.  Still there had been a peculiar expression on his face.

During the last fortnight, while doing the hundred and one things which fell to her share, Betty had given the subject of Enid Crofton and Godfrey Radmore a good deal of thought, while telling herself all the time that, after all, it was none of her business—­now.

All at once she became aware that Radmore was looking hard at her.  “Look here,” he exclaimed, coming up close to where she was again engaged in drying and polishing the heavy old crystal goblets.  “I want to ask you a favour, Betty.  It’s absurd that I should be here, with far more money than I know what to do with, while the only people in the world I care for, are all worried, anxious, and overworking themselves.  Janet says it’s impossible to get a cook.  What I want to do if you’ll let me—­” he looked at her pleadingly, and Betty’s heart began to beat:  thus was he wont to look at her in the old days, when he wanted to wheedle something out of her.

“What I want to do,” he went on eagerly, “is to go up to London to-morrow morning and bring back a cook in triumph!  Life has taught me one thing,—­that is that money can procure anything.”  As she remained silent, he added in a tone of relief, “There, that’s settled!  You go up to bed now.  I’ll be off early in the morning, and we’ll have a cook back by lunch-time.”