"Here is Sir Thomas," said Lady Harrison, rising a little nervously from the chair by Daisy's in the dining-room, as she saw through the window, the long black car glide up the drive; "now, I think you'll do very well, dearie. Just follow Jean's instructions when you're bringing the things into the dining-room. You'll have to wait on the table to-night, you see, since Alice has left us." "Dinna fash yersel, lassie," said Jean, as she filled the soup-tureen--watching Daisy with some amusement as the latter, anxious to please her mistress--the first disinterestedly kind person she had met in this bumping, jostling, crowding, yet delightful city of her great adventure--kept tiptoeing over to the swinging door, pushing it cautiously a bit open, and peering through into the dining-room; "ye needna keek through the crack o' the door. I can tell by the voices when they're set doon. There--listen!" Voices that had been mixed and muffled in the distant drawing-room swelled into sudden distinctness, as a door opened. The creak of boots dried by the sun of the street was smothered in soft carpeting as the tide of footfalls flowed about the island table in the big dining-room. A chair squeaked with the weight of a heavy figure sitting down. The feet shuffled to silence. A silk kerchief whistled out of a pocket, and a nose blew like the six o'clock siren of a flour-mill. "There, then, new gel," said Alice, coming into the room at the moment with her hat pinned on, exhaling the cologne of her recent titivation; "look sharp now. Serve the soup while 'e's a-blowin 'is nose. 'E'll 'oller like a wild bull if it ain't on the table the minit 'e gets 'is face clear o' his 'andkeher. Precious little excuse 'e needs to mieke an upraw, 'e down't." Hastened by this exhortation from one who evidently knew whereof she spoke, Daisy, her color risen to a fine bloom in her excitement, passed through the swinging door which Jean, flattened back out of sight, held open for her, and bore to the side-table the tray with the covered soup-tureen and warm plates. "Hey--bounce along here, English." Harrison, whose back was toward her, crammed his silk handkerchief, after a persistent habit of his earlier coatless and manual days, into his hip-pocket, and spoke as to Alice; "what do we pay you for?" Daisy felt every nerve in her body recoil aggressively at his tone; but, in response to a rather helpless glance from the big woman sitting awkwardly at the other end of the table, she came over rapidly with the soup-dish.