Sucking her left hand and arranging roses with her right, Martyn wondered how she should respond to this advance. She called out, tentatively: ‘I’m afraid it’s not Miss Tansey.’

‘What’s that?’ the voice said vaguely, and a moment later she heard the brisk sound of a clothes-brush at work.

The roses were done at last. She stood with the ends of the stalks in her hand and wondered why she had become so nervous.

‘Here we go again,’ a voice said in the doorway. She spun round to face a small man in an alpaca coat with a dinner jacket in his hands. He stared at her with his jaw dropped. ‘Pardon me,’ he said. ‘I thought you was Miss Tansey.’

Martyn explained.

‘Well!’ he said. ‘That’ll be her heart, that will. She ought to have given up before this. I warned her. In hospital, too? T’ch, t’ch, t’ch.’ He wagged his head and looked, apparently in astonishment, at Martyn. ‘So that’s the story,’ he continued, ‘and you’ve stepped into the breach? Fancy that! Better introduce ourselves, hadn’t we? The name’s Cringle but Bob’ll do as well as anything else. I’m ‘is lordship’s dresser. How are you?’

Martyn gave him her name and they shook hands. He had a pleasant face covered with a cobweb of fine wrinkles. ‘Been long at this game?’ he asked and added: ‘Well, that’s a foolish question, isn’t it? I should have said: will this be your first place or are you doing it in your school holidays or something of that sort.’

‘Do you suppose,’ Martyn said anxiously, ‘Miss Hamilton will think I’m too young?’

‘Not if you give satisfaction she won’t. She’s all right if you give satisfaction. Different from my case. Slave meself dizzy, I can, and if ‘is lordship’s in one of ‘is moods, what do I get for it? Spare me days, I don’t know why I put up with it and that’s a fact: But she’s all right if she likes you.’ He paused and added tentatively: ‘but you know all about that, I dare say.’ Martyn was silent and felt his curiosity reach out as if it was something tangible. At last she said desperately: ‘I’ll try. I want to give satisfaction.’

He glanced round the room. ‘Looks nice,’ he said. ‘Are you pressed and shook out? Yes, I can see you are. Flowers too. Very nice. Would you be a friend of hers? Doing it to oblige, like?’

‘No, no. I’ve never seen her. Except in the pictures, of course.’

‘Is that a fact?’ His rather bird-like eyes were bright with speculation. ‘Young ladies,’ he said, ‘have to turn their hands to all sorts of work these days, don’t they?’

‘I suppose so. Yes.’