“Why would that be better?” David asked, frowning. He was halfway into a pair of proper country trousers, linen ones with a crease. “Because it’s Sukey who would have to do any organization necessary, not that there’d be much, beyond telling Mrs. Smollett to feed us. And Sukey can always tell Mummy things in a way that doesn’t make her angry, even if she doesn’t agree.” “I’ve never really understood Miss Dorset’s status,” David said. “Well her title is housekeeper-companion, and she counts as one of the family because she’s a distant relation of Mummy’s. Her father was a second cousin or something, and a clergyman, and poor as a church mouse, of course, though if he’d lived he might have been a bishop I suppose. Anyway, he didn’t, he was killed—in the Boer War, I think, or it might have been the Spanish Armada.” I waved my hand vaguely to indicate that it was a long time ago and I couldn’t be expected to remember what war it was. David almost smiled.
