“Shan’t I?” said Mr. Jowett doubtfully.  “Well, I apologise.  Nobody likes to hear their dog miscalled....  By the way, Jackson, that’s an abominable brute of yours.  Bit three milk-girls and devastated the Scotts’ hen-house last week, I hear.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Jackson.  “Four murdered fowls they brought to me, and I had to pay for them; and they didn’t give me the corpses, which I felt was too bad.”

“What?” said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, deeply interested.  “Did you actually pay for the damage done and let them keep the fowls?”

“I did,” Mr. Jackson owned gloomily, and the topic lasted until the fruit was handed round.

“I wonder,” said Mrs. Jowett to her hostess, as she peeled a pear, “if you have met a newcomer in Priorsford—­Miss Reston?  She has taken Miss Bathgate’s rooms.”

“You mean the Honourable Pamela Reston?  She is a daughter of the late Lord Bidborough of Bidborough Manor, Surrey, and Mintern Abbas, Oxfordshire, and sister of the present peer:  I looked her up in Debrett.  I called on her, feeling it my duty to be civil to a stranger, but it seems to me a very odd thing that a peer’s daughter would care to live in such a humble way.  Mark my words, there’s something shady about it.  As likely as not, she’s an absconding lady’s-maid—­but a call commits one to nothing.  She was out anyway, so I didn’t see her.”

“Oh, indeed,” said Mrs. Jowett, blushing pink, “Miss Reston is no impostor.  When you have seen her you will realise that.  I met her yesterday at the Jardines’.  She is the most delightful creature, so charming to look at, so wonderfully graceful—­”

“I think,” said Lewis Elliot, “that that must be the Pamela Reston I used to know.  Did you say she was living in Priorsford?”

“Yes, in a cottage called Hillview, next to The Rigs, you know,” Mrs. Jowett explained.  “Mhor made friends with her whenever she arrived, and took her in to see Jean.  You can imagine how attractive she found the whole household.”

“The Jardines are very unconventional,” said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, “if you call that attractive.  Jean doesn’t know how to keep her place with people at all.  I saw her walking beside a tinker woman the other day, helping her with her bundle; and I’m sure I’ve simply had to give up calling at The Rigs, for you never knew who you would have to shake hands with.  I’m sorry for Jean, poor little soul.  It seems a pity that there is no one to dress her and give her a chance.  She’s a plain little thing at best, but clothes might do wonders for her.”

“There I totally disagree,” shouted Mr. Jowett.  “Jean, to my mind, is the best-looking girl in Priorsford.  She walks so well and has such an honest, jolly look.  I’m glad there’s no one to dress her and make an affected doll of her....  She’s the kind of girl a man would like to have for a daughter.”

“But what,” asked Mrs. Duff-Whalley, “can Miss Reston have in common with people like the Jardines?  I don’t believe they have more than L300 a year, and such a plain little house, and one queer old servant.  Miss Reston must be accustomed to things so very different.  We must ask her here to meet some of the County.”