neck. 'Oh, Elsa, he's vile!
And he's fair,' she added.
'The cards don't lie, my lover. A fair man, they said, and pain and
woe.'
'He's that all right,' Morgana said petulantly. 'Oh, what are we
going to do?'
'As we're told, I daresay.' Elsa held out a tea-towel with an
inexorable air. 'No point in fretting without reason, neither.'
Morgana accepted the cloth with a little sigh and began to wipe the
dishes. 'You can hardly say we have no reason,' she objected.
'What I say is it's best we wait and hear what the genn'lman says
before we start calling 'um names,' Elsa returned.
'I don't want to hear anything from him,' Morgana said
passionately. 'But at least he's not staying the night here—that's
something to be thankful for. I can't bear the thought of having to
share a roof with him, even for one night.'
From the doorway Lyall said drily, 'Do you think you could bear to
share it for long enough to show me a little of the house? Your
mother is otherwise occupied, or I wouldn't trouble you.'
The cup she was drying slipped from her hands and smashed into a
hundred fragments on the flagged floor.
'Now see what you've done!' Elsa scolded. 'Of all the clumsy
maids! Don't go treading through it, making things worse neither.
Tek no notice of her, sir,' she added to Lyall who stood watching,
his face expressionless. 'She'm mazed with worry, that's all. She
don't mean half of what she says.'
'Even the half is more than sufficient.' He walked into the kitchen,
ignoring Morgana, who had fetched a dustpan and brush from the
broom cupboard and was sweeping the fragments into it with more
scarlet-cheeked vigour than accuracy. 'You must be Elsa, the
mainstay of this establishment.' He smiled. 'Mrs Pentreath's own
words, not gratuitous flattery from me, I promise you.'
'Mrs Pentreath's a nice lady.' Elsa wiped a damp hand on her
overall and shook hands with him. 'And the late master was a well-
meaning genn'lman. More than that I can't say.'
Lyall was looking around him. Watching him under her lashes, as
she dumped the broken crockery into the kitchen bin, Morgana
was resentfully aware that she was seeing the kitchen through his
eyes—the big old-fashioned sink with its vast scrubbed draining
board, the range, the enormous dresser which filled one wall, in all
its homely inconvenience.
He said almost idly, 'It must be hell having to cope without a
dishwasher in the height of the season.'
'Tesn't wonderful, that's true.' Elsa allowed graciously. 'But we
manage. And hard work never hurt no one.'
'How right you are.' He glanced at Morgana. 'I suggest as we're
here, you may as well begin by showing me the rest of the kitchen
quarters. I take it that this isn't the only room.'
'No.' She would rather have cut her throat with one of Elsa's
brightly honed knives than have shown him a shed in someone
else's garden, but she gritted her teeth. 'There is a scullery—
through here. I suppose these days, you'd call it a utility room. The
washing machine's in here, and another sink, and the deep-freeze.'
'At least there are those,' he observed, glancing round, his brows
raised. 'What about a tumble-dryer? How do you manage the
laundry in wet weather?'
'There's a drying—rack that works on a pulley in the kitchen.
We've always found it perfectly efficient,' she said coldly.
'But then,' he said smoothly, 'the hotel has never precisely operated
at full stretch, has it?'
'As you say,' she agreed woodenly. 'That door leads to a courtyard,
and the former stables. Do you want to look at them now? They're
rather dilapidated.'
'I can imagine. Is there electricity laid on?'
'Well—no.'
'Then I'll save that particular delight for another occasion. What
kind of garden is there at the rear?'
She said reluctantly, 'Beyond the stables there's a walled area
which is quite sheltered. We grow vegetables there, and soft fruit,
but not to any great extent.'
'And use the home-grown produce in the hotel