She had heard from the Dranes a great deal about their famous cook, and she was glad of the opportunity to look upon this learned professor of kitchen lore.
"What would she have said to my tall raspberry tarts ?" involuntarily thought the girl.
But it was when La Fleur had gone to Mrs.Drane's room, and Cicely, wildly delighted when informed who had come to see them, had run to meet the dear old woman, that Miriam pondered most seriously upon this visit from a cook.

She had not known anything of the ties between families and old family servants.

At school, servants had been no more than machines; she was nothing to them, and they were nothing to her; and now she felt that the ignorance of these ties was one of the deprivations of her life.
That old woman upstairs had not lived very long with the Dranes, and yet she regarded them with a positive affection.

Miriam knew this from what she had heard.

If they were in trouble, and needed her, she would come to them and serve them wherever they were.