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where the pleats shielded it from the light there were streaks of the old deep red. The walls had a flowered paper-rose-garlands tied up with blue ribands, but there were so many pictures that they only appeared in bits. Most of the pictures were portraits. Mr. Pilgrim had obviously liked to have his family around him.
    Gloria, very full of herself, did showman.
    “That’s Mr. Roger when he was a baby-they didn’t ever think he’d live. And that’s Mrs. Pilgrim-she died when he was a week old. And that’s Miss Janetta and Miss Columba, took together when they was presented at Court. And that’s Mrs. Clayton-Miss Mary Pilgrim that was.”
    Judy turned from a thin, gawky Miss Columba and a quite recognizable Miss Janetta, both in white satin, to the portrait of a handsome smiling young woman with a baby on her knee.
    Gloria dropped her voice, but went on at full speed.
    “She died quite young. That’s Mr. Henry Clayton on her lap. And that’s him grown up. My mum says he was the handsomest young gentleman you could see when that was took.”
    Judy looked at the portrait of Henry Clayton. The name meant nothing to her. She had never heard it before. No shadow of the time when she was to hear it again and again reached out to touch her. She saw a lively, handsome young man of six or seven and twenty. He had his mother’s features, the dark eyes of her family, and an air of assured charm that was his own. She was aware of Gloria slipping away to the door, shutting it, and coming back again.
    “The queerest start there ever was, his going off like that.”
    “Did he go off?”
    Gloria screwed up her eyes and widened her mouth in a most expressive grimace.
    “Didn’t he just! And he wasn’t so young neither. That picture was took a long time before-he didn’t go off no more than about three years ago. He was going to be married to Miss Lesley Freyne. Lots of money she’d got, and they did say that was why he was marrying her. Anyway he come down here for the wedding, but it never come off. My mum says she wasn’t surprised-not about its being broke off, you know. But nobody knows what come of him. Three days before the wedding, and he went off and nobody’s never seen nor heard of him since. My mum says he did ought to be ashamed of himself, serving Miss Lesley the way he did. Everyone likes Miss Lesley ever so, and if she wasn’t pretty, well, he’d knowed that all along, and if he wasn’t in love with her, he knowed that too, and he didn’t ought to have gone so far- coming down for the wedding and all! My mum says she don’t wonder he couldn’t show his face here after the way he served Miss Lesley. But don’t you say I said nothing about it, because if Mrs. Robbins knowed she’d give me what for.”
    She edged towards the door and opened it cautiously, as if she expected to find Mrs. Robbins with an ear to the keyhole. Confronted by an empty corridor, she giggled and resumed her narrative.
    “Those two rooms opposite is the Miss Pilgrims’. This one’s Miss Netta’s-and it takes her all the morning to dress, so you can’t ever get in to do it till after twelve. That other door’s their bathroom. There’s another one at the other end of the passage past the stairs. That’s Mr. Jerome’s room next to it-and you can’t get in there except when he’s in the bathroom.” She gave Judy an impudent sideways grin. “Pretty old bag of tricks, isn’t it? And that’s Miss Day’s room opposite so she can go in to him if he gets one of his bad turns. It’s in the night he gets them. Something awful, they say. I wouldn’t sleep here, not for love nor money, and my mum wouldn’t let me neither. Shouts and calls out fit to curdle you, poor gentleman. I wouldn’t like to be you, sleeping so near.”
    Judy thought it was time to apply the brake.
    “How do you know, if you don’t sleep in?”
    Gloria tossed her head. The red unruly mop flew out.
    “Nor wouldn’t!” she said. “Not if they was to