new villa. The front door in
the new part was reached by a flight of dazzling white steps. From
this, a veranda ran across the front of the cottage, its rustic posts
supporting rose-trees and ivy. On the cottage side appeared an old
garden, but the new wing was surrounded by lawns and decorated with
carpet bedding. A gravel walk divided the old from the new, and
intersected the garden. At the back, Susan noted again the high brick
wall surrounding the half-completed mansion. Above this rose tall
trees, and the wall itself was overgrown with ivy. It apparently was
old and concealed an unfinished palace of the sleeping beauty, so
ragged and wild appeared the growth which peeped over the guardian wall.

With a quickness of perception unusual in her class, Susan took all
this in, then rang the bell. There was no back door, so far as she
could see, and she thought it best to enter as she had done in the
morning. But the large fat woman who opened the door gave her to
understand that she had taken a liberty.

"Of course this morning and before engaging, you were a lady," said the
cook, hustling the girl into the hall, "but now being the housemaid,
Miss Loach won't be pleased at your touching the front bell."

"I did not see any other entrance," protested Susan.

"Ah," said the cook, leading the way down a few steps into the thatched
cottage, which, it appeared was the servants' quarters, "you looked
down the area as is natural-like. But there ain't none, it being a
conservitery!"

"Why does Miss Loach live in the basement?" asked Susan, on being shown
into a comfortable room which answered the purpose of a servants' hall.

The cook resented this question. "Ah!" said she with a snort, "and why
does a miller wear a white 'at, Miss Grant, that being your name I take
it. Don't you ask no questions but if you must know, Miss Loach have
weak eyes and don't like glare. She lives like a rabbit in a burrow,
and though the rooms on the ground floor are sich as the King might
in'abit, she don't come up often save to eat. She lives in the
basement room where you saw her, Miss Grant, and she sleeps in the room
orf. When she eats, the dining-room above is at her service. An' I
don't see why she shouldn't," snorted the cook.

"I don't mean any--"

"No offence being given none is taken," interrupted cook, who seemed
fond of hearing her own wheezy voice. "Emily Pill's my name, and I
ain't ashamed of it, me having been