Janet looked round at the dresser with its rows of spotless china, at an almost unique collection of shimmering copper saucepans standing on a shelf, at the bright, clean cretonne curtains, at the well-washed flags and the scrubbed paint and woodwork, and she laughed.

“I’m a Londoner. Nothing in London ever looks like this, you know, however much you clean it. I’ve never seen a kitchen like this before. We only had a small slip of a house. I imagine if I had a kitchen like this I’d never leave it.”

Gladys’ eyes were taking Janet in.

“You’re not a bit like your sister.”

Janet untied the handkerchief she had fastened peasant fashion over her hair.

“I’m always an awful shock. People ought to be warned, really, or better still, see me first, then they wouldn’t be disappointed; but two beauties in one family would be a bit much to expect, wouldn’t it?”

Gladys’ voice was truculent.

“I like your sister.”

Janet was surprised. Sheila was seldom liked by women, especially not good-looking ones.

“You’d have liked her to have been Iris’ governess, then,” she said sympathetically, “but it would never have worked.”

“She never had any intention of coming as governess. I told Donald so dozens of times. I advised him to send the child away as a boarder. I still think it would be better.”

Janet had been chatting vaguely. She was slow at making up her mind about people. She had registered Gladys’ good looks and got no further. Now, in one sentence, said in that deep, husky voice of hers, Gladys had come out into the open. “Goodness,” thought Janet, “she doesn’t want me to come here, and she’s telling me so. Why?” Out loud she said casually:

“She’s rather small, isn’t she? Can I see her?”

Gladys went to the door and opened it, then, as if a thought struck her, she turned.

“She’d be better at school; her mother was artistic. Iris inherits it. That sort of stuff is no good on a farm; besides, women are needed and it’s ridiculous to waste woman-power on one child.”

Janet made a funny little face as the door closed.

“Getting at me, are you?” Then she shrugged her shoulders. “Silly idiot, either she’s afraid I’ll interfere with the house, which I won’t, or else she’s in love with Mr. Sheldon, and, if it’s that, she’d much better have me about than Sheila. She ought to be thankful to see my plain face.”

Gladys came back leading Iris by the hand. The child was small for eight. A thin, angular little creature, with long brown pigtails with neat bows on their ends, a spotless check cotton frock, white socks carefully pulled up, and well-polished shoes, without the stub-toed look customary in a child’s house shoes. Neat, tidy, colourless were the words she brought to mind.