Miss Carrington lowered her book, frowning impatiently. “It’s maddening never to hear you coming, Minerva,” she said. “Luckily my nerves are equable. Now what do you want?” “Merton sent his boy around with a message from Master Kit--Mr. Carrington. You are not to wait lunch for him; he is lunching out,” said Minerva. “I wonder where?” murmured Miss Carrington, but she resumed her book as if the wonder were not keen. “With Mr. Richard Latham, the poet.” Minerva had waited for the question and her eyes snapped with enjoyment at her answer. “What!” cried Miss Carrington, erect in an instant. “Kit doesn’t know him.” “It would seem that he must, now,” suggested Minerva. “He’s lunching there. There’s no mistake in the message, because Tommy didn’t merely say ‛Mr. Latham,’ nor ‛the poet,’ but ‛_Mr. Richard Latham, the poet_.’ That’s too much to get wrong.” “It’s too much, whatever Merton’s boy said. How in the world did it happen?” Miss Carrington speculated. “I suppose the secretary asked him there for some reason----” “The reason wouldn’t be hard to guess, Miss Carrington,” said Minerva, who knew how to ingratiate when she wished to. “Mr. Latham’s housekeeper, as you well know, is a friend of mine. She goes to Allen’s, the grocer’s, at this hour every day. To be sure he’s not our grocer, but the same brand of cocoa is the same brand wherever you buy it, provided the tin isn’t unsealed, and we haven’t enough cocoa for more’n two makings.” “Well, Minerva, I don’t want to run short of cocoa,” said Miss Carrington, gravely. “You’ll find my change purse in the small right-hand drawer of my bureau. Don’t charge anything at Allen’s; I don’t like the place. I hope you won’t be long.” “No longer than is necessary, Miss Carrington. Mrs. Lumley has to be given her head in talking around Robin Hood’s barn--provided I meet her. You can’t talk to her till she’s talked off to you whatever’s on her mind,” Minerva answered. The sage Minerva had found Miss Carrington’s small worn tray purse, and now she took herself soundlessly away, with complete understanding between herself and her mistress as to what was expected of her. Miss Carrington admitted her maid to intimacy though not to friendship; a lone woman must of necessity do so. No one else in her life had ever been so deeply within it as Minerva had grown to be during twenty years of service as Miss Carrington’s personal attendant, day and night, in sickness and in health. Minerva held Miss Carrington at an estimate unlike her friends’ estimate of her; in some ways it was less, in some ways more, accurate. She realized that Miss Carrington was clever, but she could not gauge her learning as her friends did. She had no way of knowing how witty, how accomplished her mistress was. On the other hand, no one else appreciated so fully her acumen, her efficiency.