Her servants, in fact, were her masters, and she dared not go into her own kitchen for a jug of hot water.

Possibly it was her dethronement in her own house that made her, with a futile clutching after lost respect, so anxious to rule in the abbey church.

As it was, although John Bevis and she had known each other long, and in some poor sense intimately, he would never in her house have dared ask for a cup of tea except it were on the table.

But here was the ease of his inn, where the landlady herself was proud to get him what he wanted.

She made the tea from her own caddy; and when he had drunk three cups of it, washed his red face, and re-tied his white neck-cloth, he set out to make his call..