some plants of venerable age, which Mason, the
parlourmaid, watered twice a week, sponging their leaves with milk
before she replaced them in their pots.

It was a typical early Victorian residence, inhabited by a spinster lady
of early Victorian type and her four henchwomen--Heap the cook, Mary the
housemaid, Mason the parlourmaid, and Jane the tweeny. Four women, plus
a boot-boy, to wait upon the wants of one solitary person, yet in
conclave with the domestic at The Croft to the right, and The Holt to
the left, Miss Briskett's maids were wont to assert that they were
worked off their feet. It was, as has been said, an early Victorian
household, conducted on early Victorian lines. Other people might be
content to buy half their supplies ready-made from the stores, but Miss
Briskett insisted on home-made bread, home-made jams and cakes; home-
made pickles and sauces; home-cured tongues and hams, and home-made
liqueurs. Cook kept the tweeny busy in the kitchen, while Mary grumbled
at having to keep half a dozen unused bedrooms in spick and span
perfection, and Mason spent her existence in polishing, and sweeping
invisible grains of dust from out-of-the-way-corners.

As a rule the domestic wheel turned on oiled wheels and Miss Briskett's
existence flowed on its even course, from one year's end to another,
with little but the weather to differentiate one month from another, but
on the day on which this history begins, a thunderbolt had fallen in the
shape of a letter bearing a New York post-mark, which the postman handed
in at the door of The Nook at the three o'clock delivery. Miss Briskett
read its contents, and gasped; read them again, and trembled; read them
a third time, and sat buried in thought for ten minutes by the clock, at
the expiration of which time she opened her own desk, and penned a note
to her friend and confidant, Mrs Ramsden, of The Holt--

"My dear Friend,--I have just received a communication from America
which is causing me considerable perturbation. If your engagements
will allow, I should be grateful if you will take tea with me this
afternoon, and give me the benefit of your wise counsel. Pray send a
verbal answer by bearer.--Yours sincerely,--

"Sophia A Briskett."

The trim Mason took the note to its destination, and waited in the hall
while Mrs Ramsden wrote her reply. The reference to a verbal answer
was only a matter of form. Miss Briskett would have been surprised an