“A word more with ye, Mrs. Tosswill.  What sort of a lady has taken The Trellis House, eh?  We don’t even know her name.”

“She’s a Mrs. Crofton—­oddly enough, a friend or acquaintance of Godfrey Radmore.  He seems to have first met her during the war, when he was quartered in Egypt.  She wrote to John and asked if there was a house to let in Beechfield, quoting Godfrey as having told her it was a delightful village.”

“And how old may she be?”

“Her husband was a Colonel Crofton, so I suppose she’s middle-aged.  She’s only been a widow three months—­if as long.”

Janet Tosswill waited till Dr. O’Farrell was well away, and then she began walking down the broad corridor which divided Old Place.  It was such a delightful, dignified, spacious house, and very dear to them all, yet Janet was always debating within herself whether they ought to go on living in it, now that they had become so poor.

When she came to the last door on the left, close to the baize door Which shut off the commons from the living rooms, she waited a moment.  Then, turning the handle, she walked into what was still called the schoolroom, though Timmy never did his lessons there.

Betty Tosswill, the eldest of John Tosswill’s three daughters, was sitting at a big mid-Victorian writing-table, examining the house-books.  She had just discovered two “mistakes” in the milkman’s account, and she felt perhaps unreasonably sorry and annoyed.  Betty had a generous, unsuspicious outlook on human nature, and a meeting with petty dishonesty was always a surprise.  She looked up with a very friendly, welcoming smile as her step-mother came into the room.  They were very good friends, these two, and they had a curiously close bond in Timmy, the only child of the one and the half-brother of the other.  Betty was now twenty-eight and there were only two persons in the world whom she had loved in her life as well as she now loved her little brother.

As her step-mother came close up to her—­“Janet?  What’s the matter?” she exclaimed, and as the other made no answer, a look of fear came over the girl’s face.  She got up from her chair.  “Don’t look like that, Janet,—­you’re frightening me!”

The older woman tried to smile.  “To tell the truth, Betty, I’ve had rather a shock.  You heard the telephone bell ring?”

“You mean some minutes ago?”

“Yes.”

“Who was it?”

“Godfrey Radmore, speaking from London.”

“Is that all?  I was afraid that something had happened to Timmy!” But, even so, the colour flamed up into Betty Tosswill’s face.

Her step-mother looked away out of the window as she went on:—­“It was stupid of me to have been so surprised, but somehow I thought he was still in Australia.”

“He was in England last year.”  Betty, not really knowing what she was doing, bent over the peccant milkman’s book.

“He’s coming down here on Friday.  I think he realises that I haven’t forgiven him for not coming to see us last year.  Still we must let bygones be bygones.”