Oooh boy, a new Betts! This one features an English doctor, for a change. Better still, it features my favorite plot - the ungrateful family plot. In this case, poor Araminta works through an agency, earning bits of money to help support her extravagant father and her anemic sister Alice. Alice lounges around all day, because she's anemic. Araminta needs a new pair of shoes, while Alice gets a new dressing gown as a treat. Over-the-top, I know! But that's the fun of this plot.
Anyway, Araminta winds up getting a last-minute job through her agency: taking care of a ten-year-old and a thirteen-year-old, the nephew and niece of Jason Lister, a doctor. She fetches them from their home, because their mother has to go to Chile to see their sick father, and takes them to Jason's house. She'll take care of them during their half-term holiday, though so far they are spoiled brats.
Araminta isn't much to look at, but Jason is, of course. Betts heroes always are. I'd forgotten that Bachelor's Wedding is the book (one of several, I think), where the hero has a rare moment of leisure. Typically, he chooses to spend it "with the poems of Horace - in the original Latin, of course." (p. 9)
We don't get a very detailed description of Jason's house; it's quite large, though, with at least four good-sized bedrooms. He also has a cook, whose husband works for the doctor as well.
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