“Let me take up the lodger’s supper, Ellen,” Daisy’s eager voice broke in.  She had got up in obedience to her stepmother, and was now laying the cloth.

“Certainly not!  I told you he only wanted me to wait on him.  You have your work cut out looking after things down here—­that’s where I wants you to help me.”

Chandler also got up.  Somehow he didn’t like to be doing nothing while Daisy was so busy.  “Yes,” he said, looking across at Mrs. Bunting, “I’d forgotten about your lodger.  Going on all right, eh?”

“Never knew so quiet and well-behaved a gentleman,” said Bunting.  “He turned our luck, did Mr. Sleuth.”

His wife left the room, and after she had gone Daisy laughed.  “You’ll hardly believe it, Mr. Chandler, but I’ve never seen this wonderful lodger.  Ellen keeps him to herself, that she does!  If I was father I’d be jealous!”

Both men laughed.  Ellen?  No, the idea was too funny.

CHAPTER XII

“All I can say is, I think Daisy ought to go.  One can’t always do just what one wants to do—­not in this world, at any rate!”

Mrs. Bunting did not seem to be addressing anyone in particular, though both her husband and her stepdaughter were in the room.  She was standing by the table, staring straight before her, and as she spoke she avoided looking at either Bunting or Daisy.  There was in her voice a tone of cross decision, of thin finality, with which they were both acquainted, and to which each listener knew the other would have to bow.

There was silence for a moment, then Daisy broke out passionately, “I don’t see why I should go if I don’t want to!” she cried.  “You’ll allow I’ve been useful to you, Ellen?  ’Tisn’t even as if you was quite well.”

“I am quite well—­perfectly well!” snapped out Mrs. Bunting, and she turned her pale, drawn face, and looked angrily at her stepdaughter.

“’Tain’t often I has a chance of being with you and father.”  There were tears in Daisy’s voice, and Bunting glanced deprecatingly at his wife.

An invitation had come to Daisy—­an invitation from her own dead mother’s sister, who was housekeeper in a big house in Belgrave Square.  “The family” had gone away for the Christmas holidays, and Aunt Margaret—­Daisy was her godchild—­had begged that her niece might come and spend two or three days with her.

But the girl had already had more than one taste of what life was like in the great gloomy basement of 100 Belgrave Square.  Aunt Margaret was one of those old-fashioned servants for whom the modern employer is always sighing.  While “the family” were away it was her joy—­she regarded it as a privilege—­to wash sixty-seven pieces of very valuable china contained in two cabinets in the drawing-room; she also slept in every bed by turns, to keep them all well aired.  These were the two duties with which she intended her young niece to assist her, and Daisy’s soul sickened at the prospect.