“And did you expect her to do so, sir, may I ask?” inquired Jane with withering scorn.

“Do you mean to tell me that Miss Molly gave you no orders about preparing a room?” countered the doctor, skillfully avoiding the point raised?

“No, sir, she didn’t.  And if I’m kep’ here talking much longer, there won’t be one prepared, neither!  ’Tis no use crying over spilt milk.  Let me get on with the airing of my sheets, and do you talk to the young lady whiles I see to it.”

And Jane departed forthwith about her business.

“Jane Crab,” observed Selwyn, twinkling, “has been with us five-and-twenty years.  I had better do as she tells me.”  He threw a doleful glance at the unappetizing tea in Sara’s cup.  “I positively dare not order you fresh tea—­in the circumstances.  Jane would probably retaliate with an ultimatum involving a rigid choice between tea and the preparation of your room, accompanied by a pithy summary of the capabilities of one pair of hands.”

“Wouldn’t you like some tea yourself?” hazarded Sara.

“I should—­very much.  But I see no prospect of getting any while Jane maintains her present attitude of mind.”

“Then—­if you will show me the kitchen—­I’ll make some,” announced Sara valiantly.

Selwyn regarded her with a pitying smile.

“You don’t know Jane,” he said.  “Trespassers in the kitchen are not—­welcomed.”

“And Jane doesn’t know me,” replied Sara firmly.

“On your own head be it, then,” retorted the doctor, and led the way to the sacrosanct domain presided over by Jane Crab.

How Sara managed it Selwyn never knew, but she contrived to invade Jane’s kitchen and perform the office of tea-making without offending her in the very least.  Nay, more, by some occult process known only to herself, she succeeded in winning Jane’s capacious heart, and from that moment onwards, the autocrat of the kitchen became her devoted satellite; and later, when Sara started to make drastic changes in the slip-shod arrangements of the house, her most willing ally.

“Miss Tennant’s the only body in the place as has got some sense in her head,” she was heard to observe on more than one occasion.

CHAPTER VI

THE SKELETON IN SELWYN’S CUPBOARD

After tea, Selwyn escorted Sara upstairs and introduced her to his wife.  Mrs. Selwyn was a slender, colourless woman, possessing the remnants of what must at one time have been an ineffective kind of prettiness.  She was a determinedly chronic invalid, and rarely left the rooms which had been set aside for her use to join the other members of the family downstairs.

“The stairs try my heart, you see,” she told Sara, with the martyred air peculiar to the hypochondriac—­the genuine sufferer rarely has it.  “It is, of course, a great deprivation to me, and I don’t think either Dick”—­with an inimical glance at her husband—­“or Molly come up to see me as often as they might.  Stairs are no difficulty to them.”