“What on earth were you doing, ringing the front doorbell as if you were company?” she demanded. “In this household servants use the tradesmen’s entrance.”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I didn’t see where it was.”

“Down the steps at the side, same as every house,” she said, still looking at me with disdain. “No good comes of getting ideas above your station, my girl, even if you do work for one of those fancy domestic agencies.”

She regarded me in the most patronizing manner.

“I hope you’ll do a good job for Mrs. Bantry,” she said. She spoke in that quaite, quaite exaggeratedly posh accent so often affected by the lower classes when they want to sound educated. “She has a lot of lovely things in that house. Quaite the world traveler, she and her husband, the colonel. You are from a locally hired firm, I believe.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“I hope she’s had your references checked.”

“We come highly recommended by the Lady Georgiana, sister of the Duke of Glen Garry and Rannoch,” I said, humbly surveying the milk bottles on the step.

“Oh, well, in that case . . .” She let the rest of the sentence dangle in midair. “That’s almost as good as royalty, isn’t it? I saw her once at a party, you know. A lovely young thing. Quite as pretty as her mother, who was a former actress, you know.”

“Oh, yes,” I said, deciding on the spot that her eyesight was probably defective.

“It’s my belief that the Prince of Wales should look no further,” she said, confidentially now. “It’s about time he took a bride, and a good English one is what we’d all like. Not one of these foreigners, especially not a German.”

Since my ancestry was a quarter Scottish and had a good admixture of German, I stayed silent.

“Thank you for the key,” I said. “I’ll return it tomorrow after I’ve straightened up the place.”

“Good girl.” She smiled at me in almost a kindly fashion now. “I like it when girls are well spoken. It’s all very well to make an effort to better yourself. Just don’t get those ideas above your station.”

“No, madam,” I said, and beat a hasty retreat.

I climbed the steps to the Bantry-Bynge house triumphant, with the key in my hand. First test accomplished. I turned the key and the door swung open. Second test, ditto. I stepped inside and savored the quiet of a sleeping house. A quick tour revealed that this job would be a piece of cake. The reception rooms lay swathed in dust sheets. I went up the stairs and located Mrs. B-B’s bedroom easily enough. It was all pink and white and frothy with garlands of roses on the wallpaper. Expensive perfume lingered. Very much a lady’s room. I wondered how often the colonel was invited in. I set to work, opening the windows and letting in the good, fresh air, whisking off dust sheets and shaking them out of the window. There were lots of little ornaments and crystal jars around so I was extra careful with my dusting, knowing my tendency to clumsiness. Then I found that they had a vacuum cleaner. I had never used one before but it looked like fun—and a lot less work than pushing a carpet sweeper up and down. I turned it on. It promptly raced across the carpet with me holding on for dear life and started sucking up the lace curtains. Finally I managed to turn it off before the whole curtain rod came down. Fortunately I also managed to rescue the curtain, which survived with only a slight chewing in one corner. After that I decided that the carpet sweeper might just be safer.