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Florence was in one of her haphazard moods. She caught a toe in a corner of the dining-room carpet when she entered the dining-room with a tray of custard-glasses, for, in those days, custard was served in glasses which, in a more free future, would contain Dubonnet or Sherry or Gin and It. The glasses slid in a clattering avalanche to the floor and spilled broken glass and dollops of yellow matter upon the carpet. Mr. Marsland, glancing irritably over a nervous shoulder, remarked that there would be no mating of gooseberry tart and custard on this June day.

Florrie had tonsils, and was a mouth-breather. She was a good girl, though given to lapses, and when she lapsed her language slipped like her stockings. Mrs. Pomeroy was always saying to her: “Florence, pull up your stockings.”

“Coo, oh—lordy, how did I come to do that?”

Mrs. Pomeroy, sitting at the head of her table, answered Florrie’s question with dignity and restraint.

“Just carelessness, Florence, carelessness and too much haste. How often have I told you not to come into a room with your head in front of your feet. Get a dustpan and brush and a wet cloth and clean up that mess.”

“Yes’m. I’m sorry, m’m. Fact is—the sole is coming off me shoe.”

“More carelessness, Florence. Get a dustpan and brush and a wet cloth and clean up that mess.”

Mrs. Pomeroy was serving gooseberry tart. Florence should have distributed the plates, but since the Kidderminster carpet was Florence’s immediate concern, it being a new one, Mrs. Pomeroy apologized for the disaster, and asked Mr. Truslove and Miss Popham if they would be so kind as to pass the plates. Mrs. Pomeroy was always urbane, if formidably so. Rarely was she seen out of black satin, with a white fichu fastened with an amethyst brooch. Big, blonde, high-coloured, high-bosomed, a Wellington of a warrior with a crisp and deliberate voice, she was never out of countenance, and never in flurry. It was said that Mrs. Pomeroy had suffered misfortune and unhappiness in her past. It was not—her—past, but the product of a disastrous marriage. Mr. Pomeroy was dead, had been decently dead for years, and his widow held her head high as though refusing to recapture the unpleasant odour of that self-same past.

The table sugared its gooseberry tart and ate it, minus custard, while Florrie, with heavy breathing, swept and mopped up the debris. There was silence, and Mrs. Pomeroy’s silence was the most evident part of the stillness. Almost it was the silence in church after the officiating priest’s last solemn Amen.

For, there was more behind Mrs. Pomeroy’s silence than the mere pressure of disapproval and self-restraint. Florence had supplied her mistress with access to an inspiration. Mrs. Pomeroy had been waiting for some such occasion—however trivial—to make an innovation that she contemplated appear natural. Nos. 3, 4 and 5 Caroline Terrace had developed from a boarding-house into a Private Hotel, and its new dignity deserved service in trousers.

Mrs. Pomeroy broke the silence. She spoke to her clientele as to a friendly but docile committee.

“I really think I must engage a man.”

Mr. Truslove grunted his approval.

“Excellent idea, madam. Someone with a feeling for boots.”

“Quite so,” said Mrs. Pomeroy, “someone who could carry up coal and luggage and wait at table. A properly trained man. I shall go up to town and call on Messrs. Garter and Pranson. I believe that theirs is the most reliable agency in London.”

Mr. Truslove was capturing the last gooseberry.

“May I make a suggestion?”

Mrs. Pomeroy was always gracious to Mr. Truslove. He was first floor and somewhat permanent.

“Why—certainly.”

“With a trained man to wait we might have separate tables.”

Mrs. Pomeroy did not snub him. She too had been contemplating some such development. It would be more chic, more productive of prestige. And Mr. Truslove was a particular and somewhat separative person. He hated having constitutional chatterers at his elbow, irresponsible maiden ladies who were bright and vivacious, and quite unable to refrain from neighbourly conversation.