"No, I'm not; I'm glad. Now, I'll be bound to say there's boiled mutton and turnips for dinner, and plain rice pudding. It's just the sort of meal one would expect in a house like this. Mum!" He gave his lips a significant tap, for the door opened, and Lucy entered, accompanied by a sour-looking maid with a clayey skin and dull grey eyes, bearing a tray. "Be as quick as you can, Eliza," said Lucy. "You won't mind my helping, Mr Oldroyd, will you?" she continued. "We only keep one servant now." "Mind? Not I," he replied cheerily. "Let me help too. I'll lay the knives and forks." "No, no, no!" cried Lucy, as she wondered what Mrs Alleyne would have said if she had heard her allusion to "one servant now." "Oh, but I shall," he said; and the maid looked less grim as she saw the doctor begin to help. "Let's see," he said, "knives right, forks left. Won't do to turn the table round if you place them wrong, as the Irishman did." Just then the maid--Eliza--left the room to fetch some addition to the table. "I am glad you are going to stay, Mr Oldroyd," said Lucy naively. "Are you?" he said, watching her intently as the busy little hands produced cruets and glasses from the sideboard cupboard. "Oh yes, for it is so dull here." "Do you find it so?" "Oh, no, I don't. I was thinking of Moray. It will be someone for him to talk to. Mamma fidgets about him so; but I felt as sure as could be that he only looked ill because he works so terribly hard." A step was heard outside, and the young doctor started from the table, where he was arranging a couple of spoons on either side of a salt-cellar, with so guilty a look that Lucy turned away her head to conceal a smile. Oldroyd saw it though, and was annoyed at being so weak and boyish; but he felt that, after all, he was right, for it would have looked extremely undignified in Mrs Alleyne's eyes if he had been caught playing so domestic a part in a strange house. "I wish she had not laughed at me, though," he said to himself; and then he tried to pass the matter off as Mrs Alleyne came back, bland and dignified, trying to conceal the fact that she had been out to make a few preparations that would help to hide the poverty of the land. "You will excuse our meal being very simple, Mr Oldroyd," she said quietly; "I did not expect company." "If you would kindly treat me as if I were not company, Mrs Alleyne, I should be greatly obliged," replied Oldroyd; and then there was an interchange of bows--that on the lady's part being of a very dignified but gracious kind, one that suggested tolerance, and an absolute refusal to accept the doctor as anything else than a visitor.