"Well?" parried Audrey, holding one hand behind her.

They did not shake hands. People who call at ten o'clock in the morning
cannot expect to have their hands shaken. Miss Ingate certainly expected
nothing of the sort. She had the freedom of Flank Hall, as of scores of
other houses, at all times of day. Servants opened front doors for her with
a careless smile, and having shut front doors they left her loose, like a
familiar cat, to find what she wanted. They seldom "showed" her into any
room, nor did they dream of acting before her the unconvincing comedy of
going to "see" whether masters or mistresses were out or in.

"Where's your mother?" asked Miss Ingate idly, quite sure that interesting
divulgations would come, and quite content to wait for them. She had been
out of the village for over a week.

"Mother's taking her acetyl salicylic," Audrey answered, coming to the door
of the study.

This meant merely that Mrs. Moze had a customary attack of the neuralgia
for which the district is justly renowned among strangers.

"Oh!" murmured Miss Ingate callously. Mrs. Moze, though she had lived in
the district for twenty-five years, did not belong to it. If she chose to
keep on having neuralgia, that was her affair, but in justice to natives
and to the district she ought not to make too much of it, and she ought to
admit that it might well be due to her weakness after her operation. Miss
Ingate considered the climate to be the finest in England; which it was, on
the condition that you were proof against neuralgia.