Then I went to bed. But, oh, not to sleep. The family’s appalling habit of leaving doors half open prevented that, and I heard Ross say to Brown when he came up to bed (his voice does carry so), ’What’s to be done, Sam, they can’t stop here?’ ’Certainly not, Master Ross. Never saw such a dinner in my life, though the cooking was all right.’ ’Yes, it’s the stuff they cooked that’s wrong. Can’t you do something?’ said Ross vaguely. Sam has always seemed to be able to do the things that put our muddles right. ’Well, you see, sir,’ said Brown, ’it’s a bit awkward; Mrs Ellsley seems to be paying very little, and food is expensive.’ ’Have you ever known my sister pay very little for anything if it was possible to pay a lot?’ ’No, sir, and that’s what I can’t understand about it.’ ’But how much _is_ she paying, then?’ inquired my brother. ’Six guineas, sir.’ ’But aren’t there always extras in a place like this?’ said Ross vaguely, searching his mind for recollections of lodgings at the sea. ’Don’t they always make the profits out of—cruets, I think they call it?’ ’Miss Margaret don’t seem to have gone into any details,’ said Brown. ’No,’ agreed Ross, ’she wouldn’t. But I should have thought you could feed two women and a child better than that for eighteen pounds a week. Well, they’ll have to pay more, that’s all.’ ’But it isn’t eighteen pounds,’ said Brown. ’You said it was just now,’ said Ross, ’six guineas each. ’But it was two guineas that was meant, sir. Six guineas for the lot of them.’ I heard my brother sink into a seat and scrape his feet along the floor, as he does when the burden of life becomes too heavy to be borne standing up. ’Do you mean to say, Sam, that the landlady proposes to provide rooms, beds, food, baths, boots, fires, cruets, and——’ here Ross searched violently in his mind for more things which Mrs Tremayne was willing to provide, ’and "Believer’s Visions" for two pounds a week each? Why, she’s a public benefactor.’ ’That’s the price, sir. She said she asked six guineas and the lady agreed without arguing, as her lodgers usually do.’ ’Well, of course, that’s the explanation, Sam. She thought she meant "each."’ ’The "she’s" me,’ I said to myself, to make it clearer in my mind. ’Not a doubt about it, sir,’ said Sam. ’Funny things, women,’ said my brother reflectively, ’never seem able to make a proper arrangement with a hotel, or book a cabin. The only mess I ever got into on a ship was when I let one of my aunts book my berth going out to—I forget where——’ ’Indeed, sir,’ said Brown, with interest. ’Yes, wrote and said she’d booked my berth but the ship was full and I’d have to share a cabin with a Captain Booth. Hoped I didn’t mind. I loathed it, of course.’ ’Of course,’ said Brown. ’However, there was nothing to be done but put up with it, so I prayed it might be the Captain Booth in the 4th Lancers that I knew a bit. Where were you, Sam, that time?’ ’Typhoid.’