She explained carefully that she was always called Miss Tessitt, not Tessitt or Louisa. It was ‘nicer’. She told Sophia four times that she was not strong, for in addition to the weakness of her heart she suffered from high blood pressure, occasional severe headaches, and mysterious fits of dizziness, aches, inabilities of the feet, etc. The list, Sophia felt, was capable of extending indefinitely.

She could cook a little, but she did not like it. In fact, she did not care for rough work at all. Nor for washing, of course. When she was with Mrs Lacey of Priory Walk, every bit of washing was sent out every week. Every bit of it. Even bits that most ladies would have wanted done at home. Mrs Lacey had a flat. That was very convenient, because flats had no stairs, and stairs were bad for Miss Tessitt’s heart, blood pressure and feet.

Sophia timidly pointed out that the cottage stairs were a very short flight.

‘But very narrow, are they not?’ said Miss Tessitt looking at them in a melancholy way. ‘Very dangerous, Ay should say. A person might easily stumble on them, might they not? One of them is broken. Look,’ and Miss Tessitt pointed unerringly with the umbrella which she had brought out to fend off the rigours of a clear April twilight. ‘You’ll ’ave that seen to, will you not? Ay might stumble on it, and fall, and be laid up a ’elpless cripple for the rest of may life, and Ay am not yet turned six-and-forty. Are all the floors parquet?’

Sophia confessed that they were.

‘That would mean a lot of work,’ remarked Miss Tessitt impersonally, as though this fact would not concern her at all. ‘Mrs Lacey only had parquet in the drorin’-room. May knees give may a lot of trouble, may knees do. It is a small place, is it not?’ she observed, looking commiseratingly at Sophia and then slowly round the sitting room. She added, ‘But compect, is it not? Very compect,’ and Sophia felt that the cottage’s reputation was redeemed.

By a series of hints, hesitancies and avoidances of any coarse remarks about references, Sophia and Miss Tessitt at length arrived at the decision that Miss Tessitt should enter Sophia’s employment at the salary mentioned to the agency; and she was to begin work on the following Monday. She did not look at all pleased about it. Once or twice Sophia, who was already wondering whether Miss Tessitt would be any use at all, was alarmed to hear her give a deep sigh. However – ‘It is may indigestion,’ explained Miss Tessitt graciously, laying a gloved hand upon her bosom.

She paused on the threshold as Sophia was showing her out, and pointed the umbrella at the steps.

‘Somewen does not know how to clean steps,’ she said with playful severity. ‘They do not look very nace, do they, now?’

‘Oh, that’s poor old Mrs Barker,’ said Sophia, heartily and rashly. ‘She cleans them for one and sixpence a week.’