were to have a fire, the woodpile and I must do the trick
together. Souls can be mistaken though, sometimes, if consciences never
can; and Brother Adversity contradicted mine by darting out again to see
what I was doing, ordering me to stop, and doing it all himself.

I ran to beg for immediate bed-linen while he annexed a portion of the
family woodpile, and we met outside my mistress's door. On the threshold
I confidently expected her grateful ladyship to say: "What _are_ you
doing with that wood, Dane?" But she was too much crushed under her own
load of cold and discomfort to object to his and wish it transferred to
me. I'd knelt down to make a funeral pyre of paper roses, when in a
voice low yet firm my brother ordered me to my feet. This wasn't work
for girls when men were about, he grumbled; and perhaps it was as well,
for I never made a wood fire in my life. As for him, he might have been
a fire-tamer, so quickly did the flames leap up and try to lick his
hands. When it was certain that they couldn't go stealthily crawling
away again, he shot from the room, and in two minutes was back with the
big kettle of hot water under whose weight I should have staggered and
fallen, perhaps.

By this time I had made the bed, and tumbled all reminders of the two
"sympathetic messieurs" ruthlessly into no-man's land outside the door.
Things began to look more cheerful. Lady Turnour brightened visibly; and
when appetizing smells of cooking stole through the wide cracks all
round the door she decided that, after all, she would dine.

It was not until after I had seen her descend with her husband, and had
finished unpacking, that I had a chance to think of my own affairs. Then
I did wonder on what shelf I was to lie, or on what hook hang, for the
night. I had no information yet as regarded my own sleeping or eating,
but both began to assume importance in my eyes, and I went down to learn
my fate. Where was I to dine? Why, in the kitchen, to be sure, since the
_salle a manger_ was in use as a sitting-room until bedtime. As for
sleeping--why, that was a difficult matter. It was true that the English
milord had spoken of a room for me, but in the press of business it had
been forgotten. What a pity that the chauffeur and I were not a married
couple, _n'est pas?_ That would make everything quite simple. But--as
it was, no doubt there was a box-room, and matters would arrange
themselves when there was time to attend to them.

"Matte