"No? I'm half inclined to envy you. No, I'm not! If it weren't for my
work, I should go out of my mind."
She put her hand to her head, and for an instant a wearied, melancholy
expression flitted across her face, as if some hidden trouble had reared
its head and grinned at her.
The door opened, and a maid appeared.
"Burden, this is Miss Lorton," said Lady Wolfer. "Is her room ready?"
Burden looked exceedingly doubtful.
"I expected it! Please have it got ready at once; and send some wine and
biscuits, please."
A footman brought them, and Lady Wolfer poured some wine out for Nell.
"Oh, but you must! Heaven knows when we shall have lunch; they'll very
likely consider that scramble downstairs as sufficient. But you'll see
to all that for the future, won't you?"
"You must tell me, Lady Wolfer----" began Nell, but her ladyship, with a
grimace, stopped her.
"My dear girl, I can't tell you anything, excepting that Lord Wolfer
takes his breakfast early--not later than nine--is seldom in to lunch,
and still less frequently at home to dinner; but when he does dine here,
he dines at eight. The cook, who is, I believe, rather a decent sort of
man, knows what Lord Wolfer likes, and you can't go very far wrong, I
fancy, if you have a joint of roast beef or a leg of mutton on the menu;
the rest doesn't matter."
Nell began to feel daunted. There was just a little too much carte blanche
about it.
"And as to the other servants, why, there's an old person named
Hubbard--Old Mother Hubbard, I call her--who is supposed to look after
them."
Nell could not help smiling.
"I don't quite see where I come in," she remarked.
Lady Wolfer laughed.
"Oh, don't you?" she replied, as if she had been explaining most fully.
"You are the figurehead, the goddess of the machine. You will see that
all goes right, and give Lord Wolfer his breakfast, and preside at the
dinner when I'm out on the stump----"
"On the what?" asked the mystified Nell.
"Out speaking at meetings or serving on committees," said Lady Wolfer.
"And you will arrange about the dinner parties and--and all that kind of
thing, you know--the stupid things that I'm expected to do, but which I
really haven't any time for. Do you quite see now?"
"I will do all I can," Nell said, and she laughed.