Half-a-dozen questions had scarcely extracted as much to the purpose from any one else.  The voice dwelt so agreeably on Mr. Wilding’s ear as he made his note, that he was rather long about it.  When he looked up again, Mrs. Goldstraw’s glance had naturally gone round the room, and now returned to him from the chimney-piece.  Its expression was one of frank readiness to be questioned, and to answer straight.

“You will excuse my asking you a few questions?” said the modest wine-merchant.

“O, surely, sir.  Or I should have no business here.”

“Have you filled the station of housekeeper before?”

“Only once.  I have lived with the same widow lady for twelve years.  Ever since I lost my husband.  She was an invalid, and is lately dead:  which is the occasion of my now wearing black.”

“I do not doubt that she has left you the best credentials?” said Mr. Wilding.

“I hope I may say, the very best.  I thought it would save trouble, sir, if I wrote down the name and address of her representatives, and brought it with me.”  Laying a card on the table.

“You singularly remind me, Mrs. Goldstraw,” said Wilding, taking the card beside him, “of a manner and tone of voice that I was once acquainted with.  Not of an individual—­I feel sure of that, though I cannot recall what it is I have in my mind—­but of a general bearing.  I ought to add, it was a kind and pleasant one.”

She smiled, as she rejoined:  “At least, I am very glad of that, sir.”

“Yes,” said the wine-merchant, thoughtfully repeating his last phrase, with a momentary glance at his future housekeeper, “it was a kind and pleasant one.  But that is the most I can make of it.  Memory is sometimes like a half-forgotten dream.  I don’t know how it may appear to you, Mrs. Goldstraw, but so it appears to me.”

Probably it appeared to Mrs. Goldstraw in a similar light, for she quietly assented to the proposition.  Mr. Wilding then offered to put himself at once in communication with the gentlemen named upon the card:  a firm of proctors in Doctors’ Commons.  To this, Mrs. Goldstraw thankfully assented.  Doctors’ Commons not being far off, Mr. Wilding suggested the feasibility of Mrs. Goldstraw’s looking in again, say in three hours’ time.  Mrs. Goldstraw readily undertook to do so.  In fine, the result of Mr. Wilding’s inquiries being eminently satisfactory, Mrs. Goldstraw was that afternoon engaged (on her own perfectly fair terms) to come to-morrow and set up her rest as housekeeper in Cripple Corner.

THE HOUSEKEEPER SPEAKS

On the next day Mrs. Goldstraw arrived, to enter on her domestic duties.

Having settled herself in her own room, without troubling the servants, and without wasting time, the new housekeeper announced herself as waiting to be favoured with any instructions which her master might wish to give her.  The wine-merchant received Mrs. Goldstraw in the dining-room, in which he had seen her on the previous day; and, the usual preliminary civilities having passed on either side, the two sat down to take counsel together on the affairs of the house.