e to see if there is anything I can do to
help you."

"I thank you----" began the girl, and then hesitated. She had meant to
declare that they wanted for nothing, perhaps to indicate that the wife
of a tenant was hardly a fitting "first-foot" to venture over the
threshold of a baronet of ancient name and of the sister who acted as
his sponsor, tutor and governor.

But then Miss Irma did not know my grandmother as Eden Valley did, still
less as we who were, as one might say, of Caesar's household.

"Let me come in--I will soon see for myself!" quoth my grandmother, and
marched straight into the front hall of the Maitlands, that immense
dusky cavern I had only once looked into over the pikes and pitchforks.
She carried Sir Louis, tenth baronet of that name, on one arm. With her
free right hand she went hither and thither, sweeping her hand along the
ledges of great oak cabinets, blowing at the dust on the stone
mantelpiece, and finally clearing the great curtained south-western
window to let in the sun in flakes and patches of scarlet and gold.

Then she turned to Miss Irma and said in the tone of an expert who has
inspected a grave piece of work and not found it wanting, "You have done
very well, my dear!"

And at this Miss Irma changed the fashion of her countenance. Pleasure
shone scarce concealed. It was certain that up to that moment she had
regarded my grandmother somewhat in the light of an intruder, but she
could not bear up against such an appeal from housewife to housewife.

"Will you come up-stairs?" she said, "I have hardly got begun here yet."

CHAPTER VI

THE APOTHEOSIS OF AGNES ANNE

No word or look included me in the invitation which Miss Irma tendered
to my grandmother. Nevertheless I followed, not knowing what else to do.
I felt huge, awkward, clumsy of build and knotty of elbow and knee. I
was conscious that my knuckles were red. I felt in the way and unhappy.
In short, I hulked. Indeed, but that I was able to watch two eyes of
darkest grey beneath a wisp of untamed curls on a small and shapely
head, and the look of the thing, I would far rather have stopped out on
the doorstep with Crazy.

And perhaps that would have been the best place for me, all things
considered.

After we had passed two or three rooms in review, all of which were, as
it appeared to me, garnished with the ordinary sheets and coverlets of a
bedroom, my grandmother abruptly turned upon Miss Irma.

"Let me see y