Sara made a wry face over the tea.  It tasted flat, and she could well imagine the long-boiling kettle from which the water with which it had been made was poured.

“I’m sure that tea’s beastly!”

A masculine voice sounded abruptly from the doorway, and, looking up, Sara beheld a tall, eager-faced man, wearing a loose shabby coat and carrying in one hand a professional-looking doctor’s bag.  The bag, however, was the only professional-looking thing about him.  For the rest, he might have been taken to be either an impoverished country squire and sportsman, or a Roman Catholic dignitary, according to whether you assessed him by his broad, well-knit figure and weather-beaten complexion, puckered with wrinkles born of jolly laughter, or by the somewhat austere and controlled set of his mouth and by the ardent luminous grey eyes, with their touch of the visionary and fanatic.

Sara set down her cup hastily.

“And I’m sure you’re Dr. Selwyn,” she said, a flicker of amusement at his unconventional greeting in her voice.

“Right!” he answered, shaking hands.  “How are you, Miss Tennant?  It was plucky of you to decide to risk us after all, and I hope—­” with a slight grimace—­“you won’t find we are any worse than I depicted.  I was very sorry I had to be out when you came,” he went on genially, “but I expect Molly has looked after you all right?  By the way”—­glancing round him in some perplexity—­“where is Molly?”

“I understood,” replied Sara tranquilly, “that she had gone in to Oldhampton.”

Dr. Selwyn’s expression was not unlike that of a puppy caught in the unlawful possession of his master’s slipper.

“What did I warn you?” he exclaimed with a rueful laugh.  “We’re quite a hopeless household, I’m afraid.  And Molly’s the most absent-minded of beings.  I expect she has clean forgotten that you were coming to-day.  She’s by way of being an artist—­art-student, rather”—­correcting himself with a smile.  “You know the kind of thing—­black carpets and Futurist colour schemes in dress.  So you must try and forgive her.  She’s only seventeen.  But Jane—­I hope Jane did the honours properly?  She is our stand-by in all emergencies.”

Sara’s eyes danced.

“I’m afraid I came upon Jane entirely in the light of an unpleasant surprise,” she responded mildly.

“What!  Do you mean to say she wasn’t prepared for you?  Oh, but this is scandalous!  What must you think of us all?” he strode across the room and pealed the bell, and, when Jane appeared in answer to the summons, demanded wrathfully why nothing was in readiness for Miss Tennant’s arrival.

Jane surveyed him with the immovable calm of the old family servant, her arms akimbo.

“And how should it be?” she wanted to know.  “Seeing that neither you nor Miss Molly named it to me that the young lady was coming to-day?”

“But I asked Miss Molly to make arrangements,” protested Selwyn feebly.