“I don’t think he does anything much:  taps the barometer, advises the gardener, fusses with fowls, potters in the garden, teaches the dog tricks.  It makes him happy to feel himself rushed, and to go carrying unopened letters at tea-time.  They have no children.  Mrs. Jowett is a dear.  She collects servants as other people collect prints or old china or Sheffield plate.  They are her hobby, and she has the most wonderful knack of managing them.  Even now, when good servants seem to have become extinct, and people who need five or six are grubbing away miserably with one and a charwoman, she has four pearls with soft voices and gentle ways, experts at their job.  She thinks about them all the time, and considers their comfort, and dresses them in pale grey with the daintiest spotted muslin aprons and mob caps.  It is a pleasure to go to the Jowetts for a meal, everything is so perfect.  The only drawback is if anyone makes the slightest mark on the cloth one of the silver-grey maids brings a saucer of water and wipes it off, and it is apt to make one nervous.  I shall never forget going there to a children’s party with David and Jock.  Great-aunt Alison warned us most solemnly before we left home about marking the cloth, so we went rather tremblingly.  There was a splendid tea in the dining-room with silver candlesticks and pink shades, and lovely china, and a glittering cloth, and heaps of good things to eat—­grown-up things like sandwiches and rich cakes, such as we hardly ever saw.  Jock was quite small and loved his food even more than he does now, dear lamb.  A maid handed round the egg-shell china—­if only they had given us mugs—­and as she was putting down Jock’s cup he turned round suddenly and his elbow simply shot it out of her hand, and sent it flying across the table.  As it went it spattered everything with weak tea and then smashed itself against one of the candlesticks.

“I wished at that moment that the world would come to an end.  There seemed no other way of clearing up the mess.  I was so ashamed, and so sorry for my poor Jock, I couldn’t lift my eyes, but Mr. Jowett rose to the occasion and earned my affection and unending gratitude.  He pretended to find it a very funny episode, and made so many jokes about it that stiffness vanished from the party, and we all became riotously happy.  And Mrs. Jowett, whose heart must have been wrung to see the beautiful table ruined at the outset, so mastered her emotion as to be able to smile and say no harm had been done....  You must go with me and see Mrs. Jowett, only don’t tell her anything in the very least sad:  she weeps at the slightest provocation.”

“Tell me more,” said Pamela—­“tell me about all the people who live in those houses on the hill.  It’s like reading a nice Cranfordy book.”