A girl typist, who acted as her clerk, came in from an adjoining room.

Elizabeth rapidly dictated a number of letters, stayed for a little friendly gossip with the girl about her father in the Army Service Corps, who had been in hospital at Rouen, and had just finished, when the gong rang for afternoon tea.
* * * * * When Elizabeth entered, the hall was crowded.

It was the principal sitting-room of the house, now that for reasons of economy fires were seldom lit in the drawing-rooms.

Before Elizabeth's advent it had been a dingy, uncomfortable place, but she and Pamela had entirely transformed it.

As in the estate so in the house, the Squire did not know what he possessed.