And she had done more than that.

She had gone to a good deal of trouble to procure him an exceptionally good situation.

Piper had just gone there, and she hoped, rather anxiously, that he would do well in it.
The man had one serious fault--now and again he would go off and have a good "drunk." Sometimes he wouldn't do this foolish, stupid thing for months, and then, perchance, he would do it two weeks running! Colonel Crofton, so hard in many ways, had been indulgent to this one fault, or vice, in an otherwise almost perfect servant.

When giving Piper a very high character Mrs.Crofton had just hinted that there had been a time when he had taken a drop too much, but she had spoken of it as being absolutely in the past.

Being the kind of woman she was, she wouldn't have said even that, had it not been that Piper had got disgracefully drunk within a week of his master's death.