She tore herself out of their hands, and stumbled, panting and weeping, up the stairs, and immediately they heard the bolt of her door shoot home. They were left in the hall, looking at each other, awkward and uncomfortable. “This is rot!” Harriet observed presently. “Helwise must have gone clean off it. We can’t let the man starve. We’d better see if we can’t dig up something. That soup-notion of yours was first-class.” “We might try,” Dandy agreed, “but I’m afraid I know next to nothing about cooking.” “Well, _I_ know everything!” Harriet answered calmly. “I can make soup that will fetch you galloping from the top of the house. You good-looking people haven’t bagged quite _all_ the tricks in this unjust world!” They went exploring into the dark larder, and both the rich man’s daughter and the mistress of the spotless farm-house exclaimed at the patent evidences of neglect. “No bread!” Harriet commented, leaning over the big pot with a guttering dip. “Wish I’d left that last tough old crust at supper. Weren’t there some biscuits in that sixpence-ha’penny glass thing in the dining-room? Just think on about them, will you? Half a blanc-mange and a few pine-apple chunks--_that’s_ no use to a hungry man! It’s all he’ll get for breakfast, though, by the look of things. I wonder if it’s any good going down into the cellar? Helwise said there was no meat, didn’t she? Eggs? No, I’m afraid not! There _must_ be some milk, though--I wonder where? Might be in the boot-cupboard, on _this_ system. Come on! We’ve got to unearth that soup somehow!” They found the full tin stowed thoughtfully among a stack of empty ones, and in the dirty kitchen Harriet began her labours by the light of a gas-jet that burnt one-sidedly with a shrieking flame. Fortunately for present conditions, though not for the master’s pocket, the fire had been left piled up high; but this piece of criminal wastefulness was the only happy accident that befell them. “What beats _me_,” Harriet remarked, sniffing disgustedly at pans, and flinging half-washed spoons into a slimy tin in a stopped-up sink, “is why Lanty hasn’t been poisoned before now, or at any rate sold up and carted to the Workhouse. It’s too bad of old Helwise, it really is! After all, he keeps her, and he works jolly hard. She might have done him a bit better than this. Do you mind cleaning a few of these things while I open the soup?” So while Harriet boiled, Dandy scrubbed, and produced, by some conjuror’s wand, a bowl and silver spoon, a small tray and a passably clean tray-cloth; also the biscuits. When the soup was added, steaming and strong, they looked at each other with conscious pride, on the heels of which came a sudden sense of guilt and confusion. After all, it was open to question that a couple of outsiders should be cooking food for a man in his own kitchen without his permission or even his knowledge.