“The excellent Sturridge a nuisance! I can’t believe it.”

“I know he’s excellent, and we just couldn’t get along without him; he’s the one reliable element in this rather haphazard household. But his very orderliness has had an effect on him. Have you ever considered what it must be like to go on unceasingly doing the correct thing in the correct manner in the same surroundings for the greater part of a lifetime? To know and ordain and superintend exactly what silver and glass and table linen shall be used and set out on what occasions, to have cellar and pantry and plate-cupboard under a minutely devised and undeviating administration, to be noiseless, impalpable, omnipresent, and, as far as your own department is concerned, omniscient?”

“I should go mad,” said Jane with conviction.

“Exactly,” said Clovis thoughtfully, swallowing his completed Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

“But Sturridge hasn’t gone mad,” said Jane with a flutter of inquiry in her voice.