but as you know, finding recruits of a satisfactory standard is no easy task

nowadays, and although I was pleased to hire Rosemary and Agnes on Mrs

Clements's recommendation, I had got no further by the time I came to have my

first business meeting with Mr Farraday during the short preliminary visit he

made to our shores in the spring of last year. It was on that occasion - in the

strangely bare study of Darlington Hall - that Mr Farraday shook my hand for the

first time, but by then we were hardly strangers to each other; quite aside from

the matter. of the staff, my new employer in several other instances had had

occasion to call upon such qualities as it may be my good fortune to possess and

found them to be, I would venture, dependable. So it was, I assume, that he felt

immediately able to talk to me in a businesslike and trusting way, and by the

end of our meeting, he had left me with the administration of a not

inconsiderable sum to meet the costs of a wide range of preparations for his

coming residency. In any case, my point is that it was during the course of this

interview, when I raised the question of the difficulty of recruiting suitable

staff in these times, that Mr Farraday, after a moment's reflection, made his

request of me; that I do my best to draw up a staff plan - 'some sort of

servants' rota' as he put it - by which this house might be run on the present

staff of four - that is to say, Mrs Clements, the two young girls, and myself.

This might, he appreciated, mean putting sections of the house 'under wraps',

but would I bring all my experience and expertise to bear to ensure such losses

were kept to a minimum? Recalling a time w hen I had had a staff of seven teen

under me, and knowing how not so long ago a staff of twenty-eight had been

employed here at Darlington Hall, the idea of devising a staff plan by which the

same house would be run on a staff of four seemed, to say the least, daunting.