The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer Page B

to Barrow. She was more genteel than her husband, whom she plainly kept in order, and seldom allowed her speech to lapse into the broad Sussex dialect which came ,most readily to Barrow’s tongue. She at once volunteered to conduct Elinor once more round the house and to show her in more detail than had Carlyon what could be cleaned or renovated and what must be thrown away. “For, questionless, ma’am, things come to a bad pass and such as must make my poor mistress turn in her grave, but what can one woman do when all’s said, and me with no help in the kitchen and not bred to kitchen work? But it was for my mistress’s sake me and Barrow has stayed with Mr. Eustace. Ah, there was a sainted lady, to be sure, and so nice in her ways—Well, there, it does no good to talk, but what we have always said and shall say is that Cheviot blood was never no good and never will be, and Mr. Eustace was all Cheviot! A Wincanton my late mistress was, and her late ladyship too, for they were sisters, and that attached you never saw the like! Her ladyship was younger than my mistress by two years, and old Mr. Wincanton, he left Highnoons to my mistress, and tied up, so they say, in his lordship.”
    “Ay, old master, he never reckoned nowt to the Cheviots,” interpolated Barrow. “A foreigner, Mr. Cheviot was. Come out of Kent, so I believe.”
    “Hush!” said his wife reprovingly. “Not but what it’s true enough, ma’am. No one hereabouts reckoned much to Mr. Cheviot, and it was for mistress’s sake we stayed here when she
    died.”
    “Besides the pension,” Barrow assured Elinor.
    Elinor allowed Mrs. Barrow to run on in this fashion while she went over the house with her, inspecting closets and linen cupboards, for she had no wish to alienate the good woman by snubbing her, and was, moreover, sufficiently curious not to object to listening to some gossip. She gathered that her late husband’s career had been one of ruinous dissipation, and that when he had visited his home, which was not often, it was usually in the company of a set of men—and sometimes not men only, said Mrs. Barrow repressively—association with whom could scarcely have been expected to improve the tone of his mind. “And to think he should not have been in the house above a day when he should have met his end like he did!” Mrs. Barrow said. “And at Master Nicky’s hands, too, which does beat all, I will say! I was never more upset in my days, ma’am, me having known Master Nicky from the cradle. But his lordship will settle it!”
    Elinor soon found that Carlyon was the great man of the neighborhood, a good landlord, as his father had been before him, and, in Mrs. Barrow’s estimation, a personage whose will was law and whose actions were above criticism. She had to suppress a smile as she listened, but while making every allowance for the loyalty of a woman born on his estate and attached to his family by every interest, she gained the impression of an estimable character who had the trick of endearing himself to his dependents.
    The afternoon was soon gone, but not without certain plans having been made between the two women and decisions arrived at. By the time Elinor sat down to an early dinner it had been agreed that a niece of Mrs. Barrow’s should be engaged on the morrow and the old coachman’s wife summoned up from the lodge to scrub and to scour; and Elinor had found time to walk round the neglected gardens.’ There was a shrubbery which must once have made a pleasant winter walk but which was so overgrown that in some places it was almost impassable. Elinor made up her mind to set the groom to clear it, a resolve which was highly applauded by Barrow, who had had some qualms lest she should have settled on himself as being the properest person for the task.
    She went back to the bookroom after dinner and sent Barrow for some working candles. The linen chest had yielded tasks enough for the most zealous needlewoman, and a