"But, Mark, what do you mean, you can't stick 'den'?" He explained laughingly. He ended, "It's just like lounge hall. Lounge hall makes me feel perfectly sick. You're not going to call the hall a lounge hall, are you?" She was quite serious and the least little bit put out. "No--I'm not. But I can't see why. I've never heard such funny ideas." He was vaguely, transiently surprised at her attitude towards his funny ideas. "Well, come on, let's see upstairs." "Yes, let's, dear." He stepped out, and she closed the door after them. "Well, that's your den." As if he had never spoken! A vague and transient discomfort shot through him. VII It was when they came down again, completely happy and pleased, that the servant incident occurred. Mabel was down the stairs slightly before him and turned a smiling face up to him as he descended. "By Jove, it's jolly," he said. "We'll be happy here," and he kissed her. "You'd better see the kitchen. It's awfully nice;" and they went along. At the kitchen door she paused and began in a mysterious whisper a long account of the servants. "I think they'll turn out quite nice girls. They're sisters, you know, and they're glad to be in a place together. They've both got young men in the village. Fancy, the cook told me that at Mrs. Wellington's where she was, at Chovensbury, she wasn't allowed to use soda for washing up because Mrs. Wellington fussed so frightfully about the pattern on her china! Fancy, in their family they've got eleven brothers and sisters. Isn't it awful how those kind of people--" Her voice got lower and lower. She seemed to Mark to be quivering with some sort of repressed excitement, as though the two maids were some rare exhibit which she had captured with a net and placed in the kitchen, and whom it was rather thrilling to open the door upon and peep at. He could hardly hear her voice and had to bend his head. It was dim in the lobby outside the kitchen door. The dimness, her intense whispers and her excitement made him feel that he was in some mysterious conspiracy with her. The whole atmosphere of the house and of this tour of inspection, which had been deliciously absorbing, became mysteriously conspiratorial, unpleasing. "...She's been to a school of cookery at Tidborough. She attended the whole course!" "Good. That's the stuff!" "Hush!" Why hush? What a funny business this was! VIII Mabel opened the kitchen door. "The master's come to see how nice the kitchen looks."