Cleek had merely time to remark that the cottage was a thatched one with a goodly allowance of garden surrounding it on all sides, and that the tops of tall trees were visible in the rear, showing that it was close to the adjacent woodland, when following Carstairs' lead, he walked inside. He was at once presented to a young, dark-haired, exceedingly pretty girl whose bright eyes impressed him with an odd sense of familiarity. Somewhere, somehow, he said to himself, he had certainly seen someone who bore a very marked resemblance to Miss Emmy Costivan. CHAPTER X A WALK IN THE GARDEN "Here you are, Emmy. These are the gentlemen you are expecting," announced Carstairs, cheerily. Miss Costivan--who was about four-and-twenty--said she was pleased to meet them, and then turned to call through an open door, "Mother, the London gentlemen have come. Luke's just fetched 'em." Immediately the sound of someone making vigorous use of a washboard, which all along had been issuing from the door, came to an abrupt end; a pair of clogs clattered noisily across a tiled floor, and there issued from the scullery a tall, gaunt, black-haired, somewhat slatternly female whose cast of features was so strongly suggestive of the Romany race that one might well have suspected her of having more than a mere dash of gypsy blood in her veins. She advanced into the room, drying her hands on her apron, and welcomed the newcomers heartily. Cleek decided that never in his life had he seen a mother and daughter who bore so little resemblance to each other. "I'll have the kettle on and some tea ready in a very few minutes, gentlemen," declared Mrs. Costivan, with an odd use of certain words which was not lost upon Cleek. "But maylike you'd be glad to run up to your room and wash a bit, the whiles the kittle's boilin'? Luke, lad, show the way, there's a bonny. Old Man's not home from the fields yet. They've a power o' hay to get under cover over at Mason's before the weather breaks." By which it was clear to Cleek that the good lady wished her visitors to understand that her husband was a field hand on one of the outlying farms. Carstairs announced his readiness to perform the suggested office, and called on the two "London gentlemen" to follow him--an act which pulled Cleek up with a jerk, for he had fallen into a state of abstraction born of a sudden realization of the peculiar character of the wet marks Mrs. Costivan had left upon her apron when she dried her hands. He had never heard of anybody washing things in mustard water--things which required hard rubbing on a laundry board. Yet, if the yellow stain left by drying her hands on her apron suggested anything, it certainly suggested that. Here, catching the sound of Carstairs' voice, Cleek turned, and together with Mr. Narkom, followed him up the stairs to an airy, double-bedded room overlooking the garden in the rear.