Pinckney was on the point of saying something more, but he checked himself, remembering that in the eyes of the servants he was here in the position of a guest.

He followed Hennessey across to the stable yard, where Larry, the groom, was washing the carriage that had fetched him from the station the night before.

“The servants won’t eat chicken,” said Phyl, in an apologetic way. She had noted everything and she guessed his thoughts. “They won’t eat game either—and they throw things away if they don’t like them—of course, it’s wasteful, but they do give things to the poor. Lots of poor people come here, every day nearly, but they don’t care for scraps—you see, it is insulting to give a poor person scraps, just as though they were animals. I remember the cook we had before Norah did it when she came first, and all the poor people stopped coming to the house. Said she ought to know better than to offer them the leavings.”

“Cheek!”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Phyl. “We’ve done it for hundreds of years.”

She closed her mouth in a way she had when she did not wish to pursue a subject further. Despite the fact that she had made friends with Pinckney, she was galled by his attitude of criticism. Guardian or no guardian, he was a stranger; relation or 57 no relation, he was a stranger, and what right had a stranger to dare to come and turn up his nose at the poor people or make remarks—he hadn’t said a word—about the wastefulness of the servants?

57

The redoubtable Rafferty was standing in the yard chewing a straw and watching Larry at work.

Rafferty was a man of genius, who had started as a helper and odd job person, and had risen to the position of factotum. He had ousted the Scotch gardener and insinuated a relation of his own in his place. There was scarcely a servant about the estate that was not a relation of Rafferty’s. Philip Berknowles had put up with a lot from Rafferty simply because Rafferty was an invaluable person in his way when not crossed. Everything went smoothly when the factotum was not interfered with. Cross him and there were immediate results ranging from ill-groomed horses to general unrest. He was a dark individual, half groom, half game-keeper in dress, a “wicked-looking divil,” according to the description of his enemies, and an exceedingly foxy-looking individual in the eyes of Pinckney.

“Rafferty,” said Mr. 

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