“Old, yes, but you’ve no need to pity him. There’s a lot of life in him yet. He’d have given you the message in time. He was just keeping you hanging about so that he could look you over.”

“Isn’t he too old to work?”

He led her towards the house.

“He’s slow, but then he always was. He worked for my grandfather, and then my uncle, and then my father, and now me. He’s an old-age pensioner, but he wouldn’t think of leaving the farm; if I told him to go he wouldn’t, any more than he’d leave my cottage. I told him the other day I might need it for some Land Army girls and he said, ‘They besoms can wait till I’m carried out.’ He meant in his coffin. Of course I shan’t turn him out, he knows that. I’ll manage somehow. We go in at the side. We never use the front. My housekeeper, Miss Batten, is a grand woman, but house-proud. Iris and I are terrified of leaving a dirty mark in the front, but we’re allowed to at the back.”

The side door opened into a long stone passage. Donald stood in the doorway and shouted.

“Iris! Iris!” He lowered his voice and turned to Janet. “I’m not going to ask you if you’ll take your sister’s job until you’ve seen the kid.”

A door opened and a woman came towards them. Janet’s eyes goggled. Was this the housekeeper? She had imagined somebody inconspicuous and middle-aged. This woman looked about thirty. She had sleek, blue-black hair smartly cut, a white, dissatisfied face, beautifully curved eyebrows, and an unusually large mouth. She had on a white overall, but it couldn’t hide an exceptionally nice figure. She spoke in a low, husky voice.

“Don’t be silly, Donald, Miss Brain can’t see Iris out here, bring her in. It is Miss Brain, isn’t it?”

Donald made the introduction.

“I’m dirty,” Janet apologized.

“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind the kitchen,” Donald suggested. “I’ve got some work to do in the yard. Will you find me before you go?”

The kitchen was enormous, stone-flagged, with a long low window looking across fields to a distant hill. Early yellow roses were hanging over the panes.

“Please sit down.” Gladys pulled out a chair. “I’ll fetch Iris. I make a rule she doesn’t run about the house in the mornings. I’m sorry to bring you in here, but you’ve no idea what this house is like to keep clean. I have the wife of one of Mr. Sheldon’s men to work for me, but even then the place is never fit to be seen.”