The descent into the lower part of the house was a new experience.  Betty had not before seen huge, flagged kitchens, vaulted servants’ halls, stone passages, butteries and dairies.  The substantial masonry of the walls and arched ceilings, the stone stairway, and the seemingly endless offices, were interestingly remote in idea from such domestic modernities as chance views of up-to-date American household workings had provided her.

In the huge kitchen itself, an elderly woman, rolling pastry, paused to curtsy to them, with stolid curiosity in her heavy-featured face.  In her character as “single-handed” cook, Mrs. Noakes had sent up uninviting meals to Lady Anstruthers for several years, but she had not seen her ladyship below stairs before.  And this was the unexpected arrival—­the young lady there had been “talk of” from the moment of her appearance.  Mrs. Noakes admitted with the grudgingness of a person of uncheerful temperament, that looks like that always would make talk.  A certain degree of vague mental illumination led her to agree with Robert, the footman, that the stranger’s effectiveness was, perhaps, also, not altogether a matter of good looks, and certainly it was not an affair of clothes.  Her brightish blue dress, of rough cloth, was nothing particular, notwithstanding the fit of it.  There was “something else about her.”  She looked round the place, not with the casual indifference of a fine young lady, carelessly curious to see what she had not seen before, but with an alert, questioning interest.

“What a big place,” she said to her ladyship.  “What substantial walls!  What huge joints must have been roasted before such a fireplace.”

She drew near to the enormous, antiquated cooking place.

“People were not very practical when this was built,” she said.  “It looks as if it must waste a great deal of coal.  Is it——?” she looked at Mrs. Noakes.  “Do you like it?”

There was a practical directness in the question for which Mrs. Noakes was not prepared.  Until this moment, it had apparently mattered little whether she liked things or not.  The condition of her implements of trade was one of her grievances—­the ancient fireplace and ovens the bitterest.

“It’s out of order, miss,” she answered.  “And they don’t use ’em like this in these days.”

“I thought not,” said Miss Vanderpoel.

She made other inquiries as direct and significant of the observing eye, and her passage through the lower part of the establishment left Mrs. Noakes and her companions in a strange but not unpleasurable state of ferment.

“Think of a young lady that’s never had nothing to do with kitchens, going straight to that shameful old fireplace, and seeing what it meant to the woman that’s got to use it.  ‘Do you like it?’ she says.  If she’d been a cook herself, she couldn’t have put it straighter.  She’s got eyes.”

“She’s been using them all over the place,” said Robert.  “Her and her ladyship’s been into rooms that’s not been opened for years.”