She shook her head, smiling.

“I suppose you’ll be down again soon?  Isn’t there anything else I can help you with?”

But this time Betty shook her head even more decidedly than before.

“Oh, no!” she exclaimed.  “I’ve got to make Nanna comfortable for the day, and it’s a long business, for she’s dreadfully particular.  As a matter of fact, Rosamund and Dolly will be down before I am.  They’ll start everything going for breakfast.  They’ve been very good lately, you know!  Perhaps you’d like to give them a hand?”

He looked at her hard.  There was just the flicker of a mischievous smile on her face.

“I suppose I ought to help them,” he said without enthusiasm.  “But I’ll go and have a bath now.  You’ll let me be your scullion when you’re getting lunch ready, eh, Betty?” He added hastily, “I think Timmy ought to stay in bed all day to-day.  You will let me take the place of Timmy, won’t you, Betty?”

“That will be very kind of you,” she replied demurely.  And then, before she could say a word of protest, he had taken the heavy tray out of her hands.  “You’ll find me much more useful than Timmy,” he said, with a touch of his old masterfulness.  “Now you lead the way up, and I’ll hand you over the tray at Nanna’s door.”

CHAPTER XXI

Some three or four hours later, Miss Pendarth, attired in a queer kind of brown smock which fell in long folds about her tall, still elegant figure, and with a gardening basket slung over her arm, stood by the glass door giving into her garden, when suddenly she heard a loud double knock on her stout, early Victorian knocker.

She turned quickly into her morning room.  Who could it be?  She knew the knock and ring of each of her neighbours, and this was none of them.

Her maid hurried out of the kitchen, and a moment later she heard a man’s voice exclaim:  “Will you kindly give this note to Miss Pendarth?  I will return for the answer in about an hour.”

Miss Pendarth knew the voice, and, stepping out of her morning room, she called out:  “Come in just for a few minutes, Mr. Radmore.”

In the old days she had always called him “Godfrey,” but when Timmy had brought him to call within a day or two of his return to Beechfield, she had used the formal mode of address.

Radmore had to obey her, willy-nilly, and as he came down the hall towards her, she was struck by the keenness and intelligence of his dark face.  She told herself grudgingly that he had certainly improved amazingly, at any rate in outward appearance, during the last ten years.

“Do let us go into your garden,” he said courteously.  “I hear that you are still Mrs. Tosswill’s only rival!”

She softened, in spite of herself.  The Godfrey Radmore of ten years ago would not have thought of saying such a civil, pleasant thing.

They walked through the glass door, and proceeded in silence down the path.  The herbaceous borders were in fuller beauty than anything the Old Place garden could now show, but Radmore paid no further compliment, and it was she who broke the silence.