Consequently, news only came to him at six in the morning when his men arrived at the stables. Having gathered the fact that Jane had locked her daughter out the previous evening, he left them at once and ran across to his sister-in-law’s cottage: there the dogged, sulky, half-dressed woman refused to share responsibility for her actions with any one, and he expressed, not for the first time, an earnest wish that his brother had been spared. He hurried agitatedly down to the Tea Gardens, where Mrs. Jarrett was whitening, at this early hour, the steps. “It’s all right,” she said, rising. “Fancy you catching me like this, with my hair in curlers! The girl came here last night, and we hadn’t gone to bed because of the noise.” “The noise going by?” She swallowed something. “No, stopping here.” Woods expressed a desire to engage in the wholesale trade of breaking necks. “And I let her come in, and if her mother doesn’t want her back, why, she can stay here.” He glanced up at the signboard. “Clara Jarrett, proprietress,” he said deliberately, “you’re the best little woman I’ve ever come across as yet, and if you think I shall make a pretty fair sort of a husband I wish you’d just say the word.” “It’s a pity, dear, about the motor-omnibuses,” she remarked later. “Wrote off last night,” said Mr. Woods, with the wink of a business man, “to buy some shares in the concern!” XIII—IRENE MERCER THE general feeling was that Jane would be more convenient, that Mary made less demand on the brain, that Ellen had the advantage of having been the title of her immediate predecessor, but she proved stern and adamant in regard to the detail, and the graceful thing to do was to give in for the moment with a secret promise to make an alteration later on. When the time came for revision, it was found that no other title but that of Irene could possibly be given. The name fitted as though she had been measured for it. An impression that it could only belong to stately and slightly offended young women on the pages of sixpenny fashion journals, vanished. “Previous to me coming here,” Irene sometimes explained in the minute and a half given to conversation whilst clearing breakfast, “I was in a business establishment. Two year I put in there, I did, and then my ’ealth give way. Otherwise I should never have dreamt of going into domestic service. I’ve been used to ’aving my evenings to myself!”