I fear, however, that in my anxiety to win the support of Mrs Clements and the

girls, I did not perhaps assess quite as stringently my own limitations; and

although my experience and customary caution in such matters prevented my giving

myself more than I could actually carry out, I was perhaps negligent over this

question of allowing myself a margin. It is not surprising then, if over several

months, this oversight should reveal itself in these small but telling ways. In

the end, I believe the matter to be no more complicated than this: I had given

myself too much to do.

 

You may be amazed that such an obvious shortcoming to a staff plan should have

continued to escape my notice, but then you will agree that such is often the

way with matters one has given abiding thought to over a period of time; one is

not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external

event. So it was in this instance; that is to say, my receiving the letter from

Miss Kenton, containing as it did, along with its long, rather unrevealing

passages, an unmistakable nostalgia for Darlington Hall, and - I am quite sure

of this - distinct hints of her desire to return here, obliged me to see my

staff plan afresh. Only then did it strike me that there was indeed a role that

a further staff member could crucially play here; that it was, in fact, this

very shortage that had been at the heart of all my recent troubles. And the more

I considered it, the more obvious it became that Miss Kenton, with her great

affection for this house, with her exemplary professionalism - the ~ort almost

impossible to find nowadays - was Just the factor needed to enable me to

complete a fully satisfactory staff plan for Darlington Hall.