The copper-haired girl, having shown Louie her cubicle, offered to show her the rest of the house also. They began upstairs on the first floor, where the girls slept. The place was an old mansion in the form of a hollow square, and as they came to each latticed embrasure Louie stopped to look at the famous Rainham yew that almost filled the grassgrown inner courtyard. The corridors were dark, and sudden steps where no steps were to have been expected made of the uneven floors a series of booby-traps for those not familiar with them. Memories of the Monmouth Rebellion seemed to linger round the corners and to be shut up in the cupboards of the place. They passed downstairs. Through the doorway of the handsome Restoration façade they saw the yew again, dark beyond the shining flags of the hall. Louie had already been in the reception-room and Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's private apartments on the right of the doorway; on the left, she was told, were the quarters of Miss Harriet (who alone of Chesson's daughters remained there) and the staff. The domestics slept at the top of the house; the four male gardeners (all married) occupied the farm a furlong away at the back. "But wouldn't you like some tea?" said the copper-haired girl. "It's in the dining-room." "I was told to report myself to Miss Chesson at five," said Louie, looking at her watch. "Well, you've just time, if you're quick----" They sought the room where the housekeeper ran cups of tea from the tap of a large and funereal bronze urn. It was ten minutes to five when Louie entered the dining-room. Before the clock had struck five she had taken a certain position in the college. She herself hardly knew how it happened. The room was full of noise and chatter, and near Louie, talking louder and making more noise than anybody else, was a lanky child of sixteen, to be a tall blonde beauty in another three or four years' time, but so far only a mass of unadjusted proportions and movements that lacked co-ordination. She had several distinct voices, and in one of these she was now engaged in unabashed mimicry. Louie, who had got her cup of tea, heard a bell-like "_Os_-trich feathers!" and she was about to put a question to the copper-haired girl when, with a mock reverence and an explosive "Your _Ma_-jesty!" the child swept backwards into her. She barely saved her cup of tea. The girl gave a quick turn; her "Clum----" was changed to a "Sorry!" as she saw a new face, and Louie smiled. "Your feet were all wrong," Louie said. The blonde child turned eagerly again. "Can you do it?" she asked. The next moment, before Louie could get out "A drawing-room curtsy? Yes," the child had cried: "Girls! Girls! Here's somebody who knows how to do it! Do come and show us!" "Really?" said Louie, smiling, and handing her cup of tea to the copper-haired girl. "Yes--come here, Rhoda, and watch (that's my sister--she's to be presented, you know)." Louie laughed. "Quickly then--I have to see Miss Chesson----"