Here, he ordered a pot of tea and a cheese scone, and lingered over this – spreading and re-spreading smaller and smaller quantities of butter on the scone – until Mrs Morrissey went to put up her ‘Closed’ sign. He then invited her to sit down beside him. He hadn’t been to the tea rooms since the day of his disastrous proposal, and it oppressed him slightly to find himself there, in a place where he had been made to feel so foolish and unhappy, but he had made himself stay and now he said, dramatically, to Clorinda Morrissey, ‘I shall come at once to the point, Mrs Morrissey. Sir William and I find ourselves in a difficult position – very difficult indeed – and we feel that you are the only person in Bath who can help us!’

Mrs Morrissey was then told about the severe domestic problem at Henrietta Street and asked if she could see any way out of it.

At first she smiled and said modestly, ‘I’m a relative newcomer to Bath, Doctor Ross, as you know, but of course I can ask around, to see whether, perhaps, one of my clients could lend you a cook.’

‘Lend? I am not sure that a borrowed cook is the kind we were hoping for.’

‘Ah well, now I do understand that. Perhaps, on second thoughts, that is not really a practical idea?’

Ross finished his tea and said: ‘What I was secretly praying is that you could offer us your services for a while, at least as far as providing us with a hot lunch, before you open your tea room for the afternoon. I know that Sir William Adeane would be immensely grateful and would pay you whatever you demanded.’

‘Pay me whatever I demanded? Well, that would be plain foolish, wouldn’t it, Doctor? For you know that I am at heart a cake-maker. For the rest of everything, I have no skill. All that I could make for you would be meat pies and pasties, with perhaps a steak-and-kidney suet pudding, or, at best an Irish stew with lamb neck and pearl barley, as my mother made it. I really have no other ideas, when it comes to savouries.’

‘But you might be willing to make those things – the pies and the stew and so forth – starting tomorrow?’

‘Starting tomorrow?’

‘Or at worst, the day after. Please say you will. You could come to Henrietta Street with me now, to agree terms with Sir William.’

Clorinda Morrissey gestured round her room, where the coal fire had now burned to embers. ‘Why must you be in such a rush, Doctor Ross? Look at all that I have to clear up now, with only one girl to help me, and never mind that I must begin baking for tomorrow.’

‘I do see that I am being impatient. But if you won’t do it, I’m not sure what we are to do, other than to starve.’