‘My dear, dear child,’ exclaimed Lady Adela, unspeakably distressed, ‘Kingston is nothing of the kind, I am sure!’ ‘Don’t trouble about Isabel,’ explained Gundred. ‘She is always talking nonsense--yes? Nobody ever cares what she says. Go on talking to Kingston, Isabel, but really you must not interrupt us any more. We have our duties, Kingston, and you idle people must not disturb us.... Dear Lady Adela, do you really think we want a dozen of those common table-cloths?’ Kingston and Isabel were silent for a moment, listening to Gundred’s conversation with her mother-in-law. ‘Well, I always believe it is best in the long run to get rather too much than too little,’ replied Lady Adela, pondering the question. ‘Besides,’ amended Gundred, with a more cheerful air, ‘they might give one discount on a quantity.’ Nothing should induce her to waste the superabundant Darnley wealth. She licked the tip of her pencil, prepared to tick off table-clothes with a lavish hand. ‘Would you say at eight and six each, or at nine shillings?’ she asked anxiously, poising the pencil in indecision. ‘Oh, for the servants, my dear, eight and six will be ample. They wear out their things in no time. It is quite shameful that they should be wanting new ones already. I got them a whole supply only the year before last.’ Gundred cluck-clucked. ‘Dear, dear,’ she said, ‘that Mrs. Bosket must really be a very careless woman--yes? And she tells me that new sheets are wanted as well--sheets and pillow-cases, dear mamma.’ ‘My child, how truly dreadful!’ answered Lady Adela. ‘You must certainly keep a close eye on Mrs. Bosket, though I do trust the poor thing is honest.’ ‘Oh, perfectly, and most obliging, but not equal to responsibility. One so often finds that in a household. And it is so important to have an efficient head--yes? I feel that one cannot safely leave her the ordering of things like this, for instance. I have to do it myself.’ Had she had ten housekeepers--had she been the daughter of two reigning sovereigns--Gundred would still have insisted on ordering the table-cloths herself. It was her nature, but she made a virtue of her nature’s necessity, and fell to weighing the comparative merits of pillow-cases at half a crown and at three and six. Half a crown was eventually fixed on. Isabel looked at Kingston. She saw that Gundred’s dialogue had irritated him. Why his annoyance was so keen she hardly knew. He himself would have been puzzled to account for it. Her eyes triumphed as she watched him, and obviously rejoiced at the defeat of his effort to pull Gundred into their talk. ‘That’s all you are likely to get out of Gundred for an hour or two,’ she murmured. ‘Martha is a much more pleasant, useful person than tiresome, head-in-the-air Mary,’ he flashed back at her resentfully.