“I’d like that very much, my Lord,” Colin said, “and so would my friend, Cyril.”
“Come and see Marlow as soon as I leave here,” the Earl said. “I shall also need two able women in the kitchen to help Mrs. Marlow and two scullions. I think that was what my father always had.”
“Aye, it were,” one woman said, “and it’ll be like old times to be helpin’ Mrs. Marlow again.”
“And I understand,” he continued, “that Mrs. Shepherd, my housekeeper, is somewhere in the village but I don’t see her here.”
“She says as it’d ’urt ’er too much to see you,” Colin explained.
“Tell her I will send a carriage for her tomorrow morning,” the Earl said, “and I want three or four housemaids immediately to help her clean up The Castle, which it badly needs.”
The younger girls started murmuring amongst themsel
