Chapter VI: Part 6

'Yes, I haven't been able to sleep the last three nights, and it's no good, I simply must work, I can't do nothing with the news so bad and Michael in the thick of all that hell. Work all day and reading at night stop me thinking, and keeps me sane, so don't ask me to do less, Ross.'

'I don't "ask" you,' he said, and there was a horrid little silence.

One of the masters at Harrow once said to daddy, 'Don't mistake your boy, in spite of his wild spirits, his fun and charm and fascination, there's iron underneath.' The iron has a way of slipping up at times; it was uppermost just then, floating merrily, like the borrowed axe, and where was the prophet to whom I could go for rescue and say, 'Alas, Master.'

'You're too thin,' he began again, and then he pulled a letter out of his pocket and said, 'I don't really know any one who can express himself more clearly than Michael, once he really starts. I've had a regular jawing to-day from him for letting you get overtired--he----'

'Oh, Ross,' I interrupted, getting up hurriedly and clutching at his sleeve, 'have you had a letter from Michael to-day?'

'Yes, and another yesterday; why, what's the matter, kid?'

'Oh, why didn't you tell me?'

'It never occurred to me,' he said, 'Michael only wrote yesterday about money matters, and about you to-day; you hear from him every day yourself, don't you?'

'But I haven't had a letter for nearly a week, Ross.'

'Why on earth didn't you tell me, then,' he said, sitting down beside me on the settle.

'It's such a small worry compared with other people's, but I've been so dreadfully anxious.'

'You poor little scrap,' he said, and the cry which he had interrupted earlier in the morning I finished on his shoulder comfortably.

'What ridiculous handkerchiefs women use,' he remarked presently, exchanging my wet crumpled ball for his nice big, cool, dry one. 'Some chap said that men must work and women must weep, and you'd think that the sex that did the weeping would go in for the larger handkerchiefs, but I suppose you can't expect a female thing to be consistent. I shall have to ask our Lady of Ventre to bring a mop if you don't stop soon, and it'll be so bad for her inside, Meg.'

'How can you be so absurd,' I said, cheering up a bit, 'and I'm not a female thing.'

'You're a very provoking one,' he replied, 'and if there's another interval in Michael's letters, I'm to be told.'

'What does Michael say?' I asked.

'I'm to be told,' he repeated, tilting up my chin.

'So you said before,' I answered, trying to take his hand away, 'but I don't want to worry you with all my woes, you've got enough of your own.'

'My dear child, I could have told you two days ago that as I had heard from Michael his letters to you were only hung up in the post, and you would have been spared all this needless worry. Are you going to tell me in future, or must I order Nannie to bring me all your letters first?' and he tilted my chin still higher.

'I will tell you,' I said weakly, leaning up against him, it seemed the only way to stop him looking at me, 'What does Michael say?'

'That the Power of Attorney he gave me to manage his affairs is now extended to his wife, that there's to be no more reading in bed, no more rackety days in London. Blows me up sky high for letting you work all day and sew miles of little frills at night. Here, I'll read you out the last bit: "Yes, it's all right about the shares. You take quite decent care of my goods, why can't you of my chattel? I'll scrag you if you let her get knocked up; don't take the slightest notice of anything she says, make her obey orders."'

'The audacity of the man, the cheek,' I exclaimed, 'to call me a "chattel," to talk of "orders"--to a person who by Act of Parliament has been put on an equality with himself--to a woman with the vote--to a householder--the autocracy of it!'

'Good word that,' said my aggravating brother, 'but then, you see, Michael isn't exactly Mr Jellaby, and I'm going to see that you do obey orders, and chuck in a few extras of my own--milk and things,' said Ross vaguely. 'Here, get outside this sandwich and have some more coffee for a start, and then up you go to get a rest.'

'It's so nice by the fire,' I remarked rebelliously, and then he remembered the old joke and said whimsically, 'You know what you promised in the harness-room that day, darling,' and he gave me one of his rare kisses.

So I hope Michael the caveman is satisfied--that black beast--out there. All my plans upset, all the crockery still in straw, no curtains up, and not a picture hung. Oh, I had planned to have the cave so nice for his return, to sprinkle all the floor with fine sea sand, to hang up the skin of that big tiger that he killed, to keep away the draught, and over the driftwood fire to set a pot of rabbit stew (he always is so hungry), and then perhaps with a new necklace for myself I should have been ready.

Just as we were getting in the bus to-night our Lady of Ventre came running out to ask me if she might come two hours late to-morrow. She said that an old woman in the village was dying, and was sure to be dead by the morning, and she had been asked to lay her out, there being no nieces or daughters who could do it. 'Can't say I like the job, mum, but one can't 'ardly refuse to perform the last horfice for the dead seeing as 'ow we've all got to come to it; it's different if you know a person; if it was you now, mum, or the capting, I'd do it with pleasure.' Ross's guffaw nearly took the roof off.

When we got back to Fernfold there were three letters from Michael, but I only liked two of them. If he gives another man a Power of Attorney to row his wife, he oughtn't to do it himself as well. It's not cricket. Oh, well, I read the third one through again and liked it better, because I left out all the written part and only read between the lines--my darling!

*CHAPTER XVI*

Another week has passed. The workpeople have gone and taken all their pots and pails. Gidger's cottage is almost finished. It will be quite completed by to-night and we are going to sleep in it.

At the moment the two chars are working in the kitchen: Brown with his leg up is unpacking china, Ross ordering every one about, Nannie and the Gidger very busy in the nursery (the Poppet giving much advice about her own department), while the only person who really matters is doing 'nothing much' for a day or two, except cussing her male relatives in her heart.

The day-nursery is rather pretty--soft green walls, so that there may be no glare to strain the precious eyes: white furniture, just big enough for tiny folk: cupboards with shelves, low enough for little hands to reach the toys and that lovely 'Masque of Flowers' for pictures.

There is a window seat with cushions, where big people can tell small ones fairy stories in the dusk. There's a comfy chair for Nannie and a rocking-horse and doll's house, all presents from Aunt Constance, sent 'with love.'

Then in the Gidger's other room the same soft green, and all the pictures the small owner loves: that perfect Madonna of Andrea del Sarto, and a copy of Watts' 'Whence--Whither?' Do you remember that perfect baby, who runs out of the sea toward you, whichever way you stand and look at it. By special request, hung where she can always see them, are the two great favourites, 'The Good Shepherd' with a lamb, and the other--five Persian fluffy kittens sitting in a row.

'Because I like,' explained the Gidger to Uncle Woss, 'to see Jesus and the tittens when I get into my byes.'

'Would you call King George by his Christian name, Gidger?' Ross asked.

'Course not, Uncle Woss.'

'Why?'

'Because it would be most fwightful cheek.'

'Then don't you see it's much more cheek to call Him by His, darling?'

'But I didn't mean to be wude to Him,' said the Poppet tearfully, 'I'm fond of Him.'

'Of course, darling, so if you just say "Sorry, Sir," it'll be all right.'

So the Gidger said, 'Sorry, Sir,' and the conversation changed to kittens.

'I wish I had a titten, Uncle Woss, just like the one in the miggle.'

Ross said he would see what could be done, with which my daughter seemed contented.

But, ah, why is there only one little bed in the nursery, why is there no little son? Yes, of course, Michael is 'better to me than ten sons,' only he's so 'normous, the other would be so cuddley.

The Gidger does so want a long clothes baby doll. She's got a mother hunger for it, and I won't give her one. Shall I tell you why? If I should ever have the joy to hope about a little son, I shall hunt the garden for a nest, and let the Gidger peep at it with all the soft, downy things inside. Then I shall say, 'I made a little nest for you once, darling, just underneath my heart,' and I shall take her up in the nursery and open a drawer and show her all the small robes and garments that I made for her, and then she'll say, 'Oh, muvver, why won't you let me have a long clothes baby dolly?' And I shall tell her about the second nest that I've begun to make, and then I shall give her a most perfect baby doll that I've got waiting in a box just now. I shall ask her sometimes if she'd like to come and learn to sew some clothes for her baby while I sew some for mine: and if she pricks her little fingers, and makes a tiny spot of blood upon the narrow hem, and looks at me with eyes like drowned forget-me-nots (as she does if she is going to cry), I shall say, 'But, darling, don't you think it's worth it for your baby?' She'll learn to know then, when she's married and she's got the mother hunger, that her baby will be worth the mother pain.

And now the evening time has come. The house is finished, the last picture is up, the last curtain hung, and all the dear domestic gods arranged. Alas! the fly in the ointment has turned up also. The staff has arrived, and I am terrified of it. I feel all awash inside to think that I have to order the dinner in the morning and tell the S.P. what her work is. However, 'sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'

Tired, but happy, I wandered into the scented garden in the dusk to gather great branches of white and purple lilac, armfuls of forget-me-not and fragrant pheasant eye and the very early honeysuckle that grows over the porch. Then I filled every vase and pot that could be induced to hold water, and some that couldn't, Ross says, because I stood a leaky jar on his dressing-table and the water trickled into the drawer beneath and reduced the contents to pulp.

The house is so sweet, filled with the spring, but if only I had decorated all the rooms for Michael! My heart goes out to him to-night with a great longing. The rooms are full of the peace and fragrance only found in old houses, yet, dear as it is, it can never be to me anything more than a house till he comes and transforms it into _Home_.

*CHAPTER XVII*

I think 'The Staff' might be worse, though it could not be more alarming. Dulcie cooks beautifully, only she won't cook enough of anything, and the S.P. is very superior, quite appallingly so. She does her work well, but she despises me. I try to like her, but it is difficult to feel any affection for a person who looks as if you were a bad smell under her nose. She has always lived with such exclusive families that I cannot think she will stay very long with us. Her last place was a failure, she only stayed a month. 'After I got there,' she explained, 'I found the mistress was not a lady.'

'How did you know?' I inquired politely.

'Oh, she never dressed for dinner, put the coals on with her fingers, and had tea in the dining-room. (By a merciful dispensation we have ours in the hall.) 'I was most uncomfortable,' she added, 'but I liked him. He was a real gentleman, his underclothing was all made of silk.'

'My 'Ilda' needs a great deal of polishing. At lunch the S.P. teaches her to wait at table, but it is a daily martyrdom for any one so perfectly genteel, so unutterably refined!

Monica turned up yesterday, unexpectedly, in a motor-car. She stayed ten minutes and then dashed back to her hospital.

'Oh, Meg!' she laughed as she came in, 'why didn't you tell me the truth years ago? What an utter little fool I've always been, but I've found out that I love him after all.'

'Well, you'd better write and tell him so,' I said, and kissed her.

'I have,' she answered, blushing like a wild rose. 'Aren't I a bold, bad girl? Aren't modern women hussies? I'm so longing for his letter, Meg. Oh, you were funny! I'm not a bit patrician, am I? I adore cement!'

Dear old Monica!

And after she had departed like a young whirlwind I had another thrill. The curate and his wife called, and he turned out to be Mr Williams. He is still solemn, and thinner and limper even than he used to be, but he cheered up a bit at the mention of the Bishop of Ligeria. She is a frail little person with a dress like a spasm and the most desolating hat it has been my lot to meet for years. I wonder if she dresses so from choice or poverty.

I was glad my brother was in London when they called. His eyes would have been fascinated by the reserve of food on Mr Williams's coat. Funny old thing I Ross is always so well-groomed himself that, like the robin, he makes all the other birds look dirty.

When he came home he brought a hamper.

'The one in the miggle's in there,' he said with pride.

'You are famed for your lucidity,' I remarked politely.

It was a kitten for the Gidger, such a purring, fluffy atom, just out of the frame and christened Fitzbattleaxe by my daughter the moment she saw it. When Nannie had whisked her away, Ross said,--

'You'll have to put up with me for a bit longer, old thing. I got a big overhauling to-day. They say my arm is better, and I can have it in a sling now instead of these infernal bandages.'

'Well, that's something,' I observed, but Ross is not of a grateful nature.

'Small something, I think,' he snorted. 'Boards are a lot of old women, said I must be content to "Make haste slowly," as if I were a schoolgirl. I want to be back with my men. Oh, what an awful time it seems since I saw anybody decent.'

'Well,' I ejaculated, 'if that's not the pink-edged limit!'

'Oh, twins don't count, Meg, but I am in a vile temper. Let's go and do something. Clean the greenhouse roof, shall we? There's just light enough. Come on!'

Ross decided the plan of campaign. I was to pour the water from my bedroom window on to the glass beneath, while he, armed with a long broom borrowed from the kitchen, would stand on a pair of steps in the garden and clean the glass with the broom aforesaid.

'Now, Meg, plenty of water, no stinting,' he ordered.

So I got a huge canfull, and in order that Ross should have all the water he desired, I poured it out, not from the spout but from the other end, with great pride and force. Alas, 'the ways of mice and men aft gang agley.' The gutter of the beastly thing was too small to catch my Niagara, and the entire volume of water rushed over the glass, down Ross's neck, into his eyes and mouth, flooding his pockets and soaking him to the skin.

He gave one awful yell and overbalanced into the water butt, the lid of which, of course, was off (it would be in my garden). In my agitation I dropped the can, which followed the water in a wild leap on to the path below, smashing two or three panes of glass in its mad career.

'Well, you have done it,' said Ross, surveying the wreckage from the water tub. 'There's no doubt if you want a thing really well done, it's best to do it oneself.'

Then Sam appeared and looked reproachfully at me, and spoke to Ross, and I heard the words 'arm' and something about 'taking more care.'

Ross looked through Sam in that disgusting way he has when he isn't pleased, and said,--

'I can't go through the house like this, Meg; why do you have your tubs lined with green. Get me a bath, Brown.'

'Cold, sir?'

'How can I get this stuff off in cold? Hot, of course,' snapped his master, 'and ask the Titmouse for the ladder, Brown, and I'll go through the bathroom window.'

As I went upstairs a little later, Ross's door was slightly open; Sam was catching it. King's Regulations and the Hickley Woods wrestling for the mastery.

'You'll excuse me, sir, you don't take care.'

Then my brother's voice floated towards me down the passage.

'No, I'll not excuse you, Brown. I've had too much cheek from you the last ten minutes! Get me a shirt. If you mention my arm again in front of Mrs Ellsley, you'll quit. Now my coat. Do you call this brushed? Now a handkerchief, and get out.'

Then as he remembered that he was now promoted to a sling he added stormily,--

'Understand once for all, I will not be fussed over like a schoolgirl, I'm not a sucking dove.'

'Oh, no, sir,' said Brown, and I caught a flicker of amusement on his impassive countenance as he closed the door behind him with the wet clothes on his arm.

Just then the carrier brought a crate of hens and a box of rabbits from Aunt Constance. We felt rather like Noah when the animals began to file into the ark. The hens were the breed that have the very large combs. 'My 'Ilda' remarked as they were put into their run,--

'My! you won't get many eggs from them, mum, they're all cocks.'

The Gidger loved the rabbits and I told her how the mother bunny would presently have some little ones, and that she would love them very much and make a warm nest for them, and pull off her own soft fur to keep her babies warm. I want my little daughter to know of all the wonderful protective instincts God has implanted in His creatures and the sweet provision that He makes for all the tiny things.

Just before dinner we flew down the village to buy some bran for the new arrivals. On our return my brother did one of his atrocious lightning changes.

When Sam let us in Ross said,--

'Thanks, Sam, any letters?' and then 'Knee bad?'

'Pretty middling, sir.'

'Go and put it up, then. What are you about on it for?'

'It'll be time enough to put it up after dinner, sir. I _must_ wait at table to-night, the parlour-maid is out.'

The atmosphere in the hall became suddenly arctic. I shivered as the cold of it blew into me. I could feel Ross looking through Sam as he asked coldly,--

'Did you intend to say "must" to me, Brown?' And Brown said,--

'No, sir,' and did not appear at dinner. I sent him up a book and two Cox's oranges, so I had to continue 'My 'Ilda's' education in the art of waiting.

As she handed the soup she decorated each plate with a beautiful scallop like a flannel petticoat. I suppose it is difficult to keep liquid level and walk at the same time. She had put no fish forks on the table, so I said reprovingly,--

'What are we to eat the fish with, Hilda?'

'Oh, whatever you like, Mrs Ellsley,' she said brightly. Ross drank some water hurriedly. I endeavoured to make my meaning clearer and to keep my face straight at the same time, whereupon 'My 'Ilda' said,--

'I do like being here; you don't mind how many mistakes I make so long as I do it right.'

She shot a knife and fork into Ross's lap, mercifully they were clean or there would have been ructions, then she upset a glass of water and got the hiccoughs, and later tripped over the footstool and sent the cheese straws flying like leaves before an autumn gale.

When 'My 'Ilda' brought the coffee into the hall she stepped on the kitten's tail, and as that indignant fluffy ball spat at her, she remarked,--

'My! ain't Fitzbattleaxe got a temper, I don't think. Your face _is_ red, Mrs Ellsley; did I do it all right at dinner?'

As I went to my room to fetch a book I heard her fall down the back stairs with a pail. It was the end of an imperfect meal. Ross says I ought to start a nursing home for sergeant-majors suffering from depression--they'd be cured in a week, and then he remarked,--

'I wonder if Sam's got a decent supper. I must go and see.'

When he came down again he tossed a little box into my lap and said,--

'Why didn't you tell _me_ that you wanted a new necklace? I'd have loved to give you one.'

'What _do_ you mean, Ross?'

'Michael wrote to me to-day that you had said you wanted a "new necklace for yourself" directly the cave was finished, and that I was to buy you one.'

Oh, isn't he absurd and dear? So I opened the box, and inside there were two to choose from. So I chose the one of very perfect pearls, and then for some extraordinary reason of his own Ross kissed me and said,--

'_How_ Michael spoils you, darling.'

But two kisses in twelve days. He must be ill, I think.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

It's All Fools' Day. Perhaps that's why the Titmouse elected to get the rheumatics that come from damp attics, so that I had to tell the Stench what 'to be getting on with.'

As I walked round the garden with him I asked if all the seeds were in.

'In, an' coming up by the galore, mum, an' I've given the turnips a dressin' of soot, as it makes a vast difference to 'em on their first appearance through the soil, mum.'

I could well believe it!

'I think you'd better dig the bed in front of the kitchen window then.'

'How deep, mum, two spits?'

I hadn't the foggiest notion how deep that is, but I said,--

'Oh, yes, _of course_, dig down as deep as ever you can; you can't dig too deep, Stench--Tench, I mean!'

Ross thinks he knows a bit about gardening, so at lunch I said,--

'Ross, how big is a spit?'

'Depends on how bad your cold is,' he began, but I closed the conversation.

Alas, alas, hear the end. Half an hour later the S.P. said would I speak to the captain in the garden? I found him in front of the kitchen window surveying some extraordinary earth-works and excavations, the Stench standing by looking particularly wooden.

'What on earth----' I began.

'I've dug so deep, mum, I come to a poipe; do it matter?' said the boy.

I surveyed the scene of his labours and found the little wretch had dug down to the kitchen drain.

'Gardening is certainly your strong point, Meg. Do you think the boy has dug this bit deep enough, or shall he take up the drains as well? By Jove,' added my brother, doubling up suddenly with laughter, 'what an acquisition you'd both be in the army. I never saw a better communication trench in my life.'

At tea-time Ross gloomily surveyed the table lightly spread with thin bread and butter and minute cakes.

'Well, there doesn't seem enough for Fitzbattleaxe, so let's go and have tea with Sam. He's dead down on his luck, too.'

'Knee bad?' I questioned.

'Putrid, so's his temper since I rowed him this morning.'

'What did you row him for?' I asked.

'Usual thing. Found him standing up brushing my clothes to-day, so I pitched into him for once in his life, hot and strong. It is rotten for him, but I really had to tell him a few home truths. He simply must stick his leg up all day.'

So we went up into Sam's little sitting-room with Fitzbattleaxe.

'Better?' said Ross, as he went in.

'Yes, thank you, sir,' said Sam, and got up hastily as I entered.

'Forgotten your orders again, Brown?' asked Ross sternly, opening the door to go out.

'No, sir,' said Sam, still standing up. (I do love to see him 'fighting' Ross.) 'Orders were: "Bed at 11. Not to stand up when it were you only, between the hours of 10.30 a.m. and 7 p.m.," sir.'

Quite obviously Sam was obeying the strict letter of the law, so Ross came in again, and I remarked,--

'And I say, same hours when it's only me, Sam.'

'If you could both remember about the verb "to be,"' began my brother.

'I can't,' I said.

Sam dropped into a chair, looking as if he'd like to smash all clocks, and remarked he was absolutely fed up.

'Well, we're not, we're half starved. That's why we've come to tea.'

'You want to count your mercies, Sam,' I said, which being a remark to which my Aunt Amelia is much addicted, was the most aggravating thing I could think of at the moment. When one is down on one's luck it is fatal to be sympathetic, and Sam was down on his, right on the bed-rock bottom of it.

'Well, I'm counting the mercies he's got and we haven't,' said Ross; 'there's quite a respectable bit of heaven spread on this table at the moment. A whole loaf, a pound of butter, two pounds of strawberry jam and jorams of Devonshire cream, goodies with sugar on top, and a plum cake that you can cut. My hat, some people have all the luck. It's a regular Hickley Wood one.'

'Make the tea, Sam,' I exclaimed, 'the kettle's boiling; mind you don't set the woods alight.'

'Have I ever set the woods alight, miss?' Sam asked indignantly.

'Nor ever failed to lose your temper either, if I suggested you would,' I answered.

So Sam grinned and felt better, and made a long arm for the kettle, and brewed tea, and cut up bread and cream, and we had it in the Hickley Woods, as we've had it millions of times together. It was just the same. Whenever I had finished my slice, Sam put another on my plate, with mountains of cream and jam on it. At the third I remarked,--

'Sam, there really are limits.'

'Yes, but you ain't reached them yet, miss; four's yours.'

'Do you think you ought to speak to me like that, now I am married and have a daughter, Sam?'

'He gets you muddled up with the daughter, I expect, same as I do,' remarked Ross, 'only the Gidger is so much more sober and serious-minded than you're ever likely to be.'

'Four,' I called out; 'limit's reached, Sam.'

'Well, there isn't any more cream, anyway,' said Sam, which, of course, was the one and only reason why we stopped in Hickley Woods.

'I begin to feel better,' observed my brother. 'Why don't I have enough to eat at lunch, Meg, I do at breakfast?'

'I see to your breakfast,' said Sam, 'and I'd see you had a good lunch if only I was allowed down.'

'Well, you aren't,' said my brother, 'so that's that, and I should think it would be better manners if you saw we had a good tea when we're up. Pass the cake. Here, you eat the little chaps, I'll have the plum.'

So Sam ate all the small cakes with sugar on top, and Fitzbattleaxe got the cream tin to lick out. He went right inside and stuck, and had to be lugged out by the tail. Then we shoved the table back and sat round the fire, and talked about the old days. At seven o'clock Nannie looked round the door. She was promptly hauled in and sat on Ross's knee.

'Sam,' she scolded, 'why do you keep them out so late? I really shall have to tell your father to wallop you. I've often threatened to, I really will to-night.'

'Let's run her down the passage, Sam, for cheek,' said Ross, and they were just about to do it when Brown suddenly got up and said,--

'Want a bath, sir?' and Nannie said, 'Will you wear your black again, ma'am?' and, of course, it was that wretched S.P. come to clear away the tea. The smell under her nose was rather worse than usual, and the picnic broke up hurriedly. I felt as if I had been having tea with my brother's man-servant, and Ross had been nursing one of the maids. Oh, I do loathe that woman!

It was a most unfortunate dinner to-night, like one of those you get at Aunt Amelia's. There didn't seem to be anything solid to eat. At the end Sam handed Ross sardines on toast. 'What a thundering lot of hors d'oeuvres we seem to be having to-night, when's the dinner coming?'

'Savoury, sir,' said Sam.

'You don't mean to tell me,' said Ross, pushing back his chair and glaring at Sam, 'that I've _had_ my dinner?'

'You've had what there was of it, sir.'

'Well, I'm jiggered. Why on earth, Meg, don't you make them cook more food. Really----'

''Tisn't her fault,' said Sam, still in the Hickley Woods, sticking up for me as he always did; 'she's told them times without number; it's no good blaming her. Shall I cut some sandwiches?'

'Sam, I suppose I can reprove my sister without your interfering, and I never blame, I always rule by love.'

'Same as you did this morning, sir,' grinned Sam, 'will you have large cups of coffee with your sandwiches?'

'Do you think that's a respectful remark to make to your superior officer, Brown?'

'No, sir, sorry.'

'I shall judge the measure of your repentance by the number of sandwiches you cut,' said Ross, 'and if the cups of coffee are very large, I might be inclined to overlook your cheek, otherwise----'

But Sam had vanished into the kitchen, and we went into the hall to wait for supper. A few minutes afterwards, Sam dumped a tray of food on the table.

We settled down comfortably for a good long evening. At 10.15, just as we were beginning to enjoy ourselves, Sam came in, he looked like milk and butter, and his voice was a caress.

'Turned your bath on, sir.'

'Are you dotty, Brown?' asked my brother.

'Certainly not, sir.'

'Well, what are you gassing about baths for at this hour of the afternoon, you gloomy ox, you're worse than a keeper.'

'Orders is orders, sir. If I've got to go to bed at 11 you'll have to go at 10.15, if I'm to see to your arm.'

'My hat,' ejaculated Ross, looking across at me in hopeless consternation, '_what_ a fool I am.'

'First of April, sir,' said Sam, and fled upstairs.

*CHAPTER XIX*

I can't manage my 'staff,' I wish I were an Eastern Queen, then I should sort of call the eunuchs when I wanted anything, instead of which the maids do exactly what they like. Ross says if I won't let Sam 'do something' I must put my own foot down.

The S.P. brings my early tea in a silver teapot instead of the little brown chap I told her I preferred. So I hid the beastly thing under my bed, hoping she would take the hint and see I really meant it. She came and asked me if that was where I wished the silver kept in future!

Then when I ordered the dinner to-day I said to Dulcie, 'Send in the junket in the old blue china bowl, please.' It came in that silver dish we use for cutlets. So I wouldn't eat the junket--said it would taste of mutton cutlets, and after lunch the S.P. rowed me for saying the silver wasn't clean, which I hadn't even thought of, for she keeps it beautifully.

Putting my foot down made my face so hot that I retired to my bedroom to recover, but alas! Fitzbattleaxe was making the day hideous with his howls. He was lodged on a ledge in my chimney, just out of reach, and was apparently afraid to jump the precipice into my bedroom.

So I tied my hair up in a handkerchief, put on a nightgown to protect my dress, and laid down comfortably on the hearthrug with my head up the chimney. At intervals I waved a bit of liver at the kitten and said in my most persuasive manner, 'Littlekittycatpoorpussycometomissusdidums.' This seemed to entertain the kitten very much as it responded by rubbing its back violently against the chimney and incidentally dislodging a good deal of soot over me, while it sniffed ecstatically at the liver.

'Goodness,' said Ross, bursting like a cyclone into the room, 'what a sight you look; is that kitten still there? Mr Williams is downstairs. Are you giving that little beast meat, Meg; how many times have I warned you that it's illegal to give rations to rodents.'

'It isn't a rodent,' I said, sitting up in the fireplace, 'and it's not rations either, it's offal.'

A frozen look of horror slowly overspread my brother's open countenance.

'Offal,' he queried, 'could it _possibly_ have been offal you said?'

'Yes,' and I began to get little creeps down my spine as I did as a child when I'd been naughty, 'it's offal, edible offal.'

'The word "edible" does not excuse the word offal.'

'They call it that in the _Times_,' I said meekly.

'There are many things in the _Times_ which it is better not to repeat in polite society, Margaret.'

'I don't call your society polite, far from it,' I rejoined. 'What does Mr Williams want?'

'Oh, my angel, he wants a lot of things: a shave, for instance, and a bath and a clean collar, and his clothes brushed, and his nails cut, and snow-white flowers against his hair, and a heap of things like that.'

'I expect he's very poor,' I said, waving the liver at Fitzbattleaxe.

'Unless he's behind with his water rate, he could have most of his present needs supplied by turning on the tap. He's asked to see you.'

'Well, I can't see him like this, can I?'

'You certainly can't. You look like the back of a cab, Meg!'

'Do tell me sensibly what he says,' I implored.

Ross pulled his mouth down at the corners, closed his eyes and put his hands together as if in prayer. '"My dear wife is laid aside with an internal chill, she is, therefore, unable to be present at the class for female confirmation candidates this afternoon, and as the vicar is away, I ventured to think that Mrs Ellsley might be good enough to speak a few words of exhortation in her place, hymn 547, let us pray."'

'How can you be so absurd?' I said.

'Oh, why do curates talk like that? Why can't this man wash? Why can't he be modern and human? Why can't he say, "Hallo, old bean, my wife ain't in the pink, got a pain in her breadbasket or something. Priceless washout, too, as it's her turn to spout to the gals. Just blew in to see if your sister would help me out of a hole and come and do a pi-jaw stunt, what!"'

Here my disgusting twin retched realistically into the soap dish, murmuring 'He makes me sick.'

'Your vulgarity is simply awful, Ross, do stop, you make me feel quite ill.'

'I venture to think, my misguided young friend----' began Ross again.

'You know what happened to the children in the Bible,' I interrupted, 'who mocked at their betters: a frightful animal jumped out at them and----'

Here I gave a piercing scream as the kitten suddenly decided to risk it, and landed unexpectedly in the middle of my stomach.

'Just so,' said Ross with a howl of laughter, 'I never saw a better illustration of it in my life.'

And now I want to ask the General Public something.

_Could_ you tell me why, because a person's mother once fell off the top of a step-ladder, a person should never be allowed to go on the top step herself? It seems such a ridiculous thing to hand on from father to son.

'Gracious,' I said, when I was rowed for it to-day, after Mr Williams had departed, 'because mother did it, it's a thousand to one I won't. I don't know the actuary figures, but it practically insures me against it, Ross.'

'I don't care,' said that gentleman, 'I won't have it, and that's all there is about it.'

'How can you be so ridiculous. You don't mind if I go up a tree, and I've done everything that you've done always. If you don't think it's dangerous for me to climb and hunt and ski, why on earth should you kick at the top of a step-ladder?'

'Well, we won't argue about it, Margaret.'

'I loathe twins,' I grumbled.

And he said he did, too, the sort that spat fire when a chap tried to take care of them.

Suddenly the bottom dropped out of the world, and everything that I had thought solid, stable, and immovable came crashing about me, and my brother, for the first and last time in all his life was 'meek' to me and said,--

'Please, darling, because I found mother after she smashed herself up so badly.'

It was that tide in the affairs of men which had I taken at the flood would have tamed the lion to eat out of my hand. Oh, wasn't I a fool to say,--

'Oh, all right, Ross.'

But there it is, and I know now what that poor darling felt when he wrote _Paradise Lost_.

*CHAPTER XX*

A telegram came from Monica this morning saying,--

'Please meet the 11.20 train.'

So the family turned up at the station _en masse_, but instead of the lady we expected, there descended from the guard's van a beautiful and dignified Great Dane with a label round his neck.

'For Meg's baronial hall. A thank-offering, sent with "Hove from a modern Lussy."'

Or, at any rate, that's what it looked like. Monica does write so badly.

The Gidger kissed the thank-offering promptly, and was rewarded with a large lick.

'Oh, _don't_ wash me with your flannel,' she exclaimed.

Then we all introduced ourselves, and Ross observed as he edged away from a very wet tongue,--

'He must be first cousin to the dog in the Bible that was so kind to the poor beggar; you'd better call him "Moreover," after him, Meg.'

'What dog, and what beggar?' I asked.

'Gracious, child, for a Bishop's daughter you don't know much Church history, and haven't you heard that old chestnut either? Why, when Lazarus was laid at the rich man's gate, Moreover, the dog, came and licked his sores.'

Our Moreover is a splendid person. Directly he arrived at the house he walked into the hall, and laid himself down by the great open fire, and looked positively Elizabethan.

On the way home Ross dashed into the post office to send some telegrams. 'Aren't I a fool never to have thought of it before,' he said fervently, but what he hadn't thought of he declined to say, so I just agreed with the fool part.

After luncheon I slipped over to see Mrs Williams. The curate opened the door himself, looking haggard, with black rings round his eyes and yesterday's beard still on his chin.

'I called to inquire for Mrs Williams and to bring her some flowers and grapes. I hope she's better,' I said.

His hand shook as he took the little basket. 'How kind of you, won't you come up and see my wife, she's a little better to-day, but I have been up with her all night. I've just taken her some tea. I'll fetch another cup.'

'Please don't bother about tea for me,' I said. 'I'm sure your maids will have enough to do.'

'We haven't any maids.'

'But who is doing for you, then?'

'I do the best I can,' and he opened the bedroom door. If you could have seen that room and its little white-faced occupant. There was no carpet on the floor, no fire, though it had turned quite cold. It was all very clean, but, oh, the poverty of it. The poor little woman was propped up with two thin pillows and a sofa cushion, and had beside her a cup of half-cold tea and a bit of bread and margarine.

'Oh, Alfred, you oughtn't to have let Mrs Ellsley up. I'm not tidy,' and she patted her hair and smoothed out the crumpled sheet.

'You look quite sweet,' I said, 'but I'm afraid you aren't well, and as you have no maids is there anything I can do for you both; what does the doctor say?'

'I haven't had the doctor.'

'She won't let me fetch him,' said her husband, 'though I have begged her to.'

'Oh, but do let me send, Mrs Williams. I am sure you ought to see him.'

'No, no,' she cried, getting very agitated, 'I shall be better in the morning.'

So I sat with her a little while and chatted and then tried once more about the doctor, but in vain. She would 'be better in the morning.'

'But, Mrs Williams, it would ease your husband's mind so; do tell me why you won't.'

Then, because she was so very tired and weak and ill, at last she told me. She had had attacks of internal pains several times during the winter, and the expense and medicine had used up all their little savings, and with a burst of bitter tears she said they owed five pounds, and had nothing more of value they could sell; and so on--all the piteous tale--of high prices and an income so minute that only by the most careful management and hard work could it be made to do in ordinary times. Gradually all the little jewels had gone and bits of plate, the food had been cut down, and she had had to turn her clothes and patch and mend and work till all her strength had gone, and now that she was ill it was 'All too much for Alfred.' The poor little soul turned faint and sick then from sheer exhaustion and lack of food. I sent her Alfred flying out for milk: there was only tinned stuff in the house, 'it went farther,' and with a reckless hand I beat up their only egg, which he informed me anxiously he had been saving for her to-morrow's dinner. And then I flung the last few drops of brandy in the glass and made her drink it all and eat some tiny sandwiches, and a few grapes. The food revived her and a scrap of colour came into her cheeks.

'Now,' I said sternly, 'I'm going to fetch a cab, and roll you up in blankets and take you to my house and nurse you up a bit.'

Of course she protested, said it was impossible.

'Why?' I demanded.

Oh, heaps of reasons, gave a few, hadn't a clean nightie, for one thing, she had only two and had been too ill to wash the other. She had so hoped there would have been some in the last parcel from the Charitable Clothing Fund.

'But I have simply dozens,' I wailed. Yes, I know, there wasn't an ounce of tact in that remark, but I was thinking of my own luxurious room, fires every night, all the pettings and scoldings I get if I'm not well, and how nobody asks me if I will have the doctor or takes the slightest notice of me if I say I won't, and of all the clothes I'd got and the general and disgusting air of affluence there is about the family. I hated myself and all my relatives. Yes, I did, the whole blessed lot of them.

'But I couldn't leave my husband,' said Mrs Williams.

'Of course, he's coming too, my spare room is crying out for visitors.'

'But we are strangers, you can't take us in like this.'

'But it was "a stranger and ye took Me in," He said. Oh,' I continued, throwing grammar to the winds, 'why didn't He tell a person what to do when the stranger won't be took in.'

She laughed at that and then consented. So I flew home and told the tale to Ross and Nannie in the nursery.

'Poor young thing,' said Nannie, 'but she'll soon get better here.' So I sent the Gidger flying to the Titmouse for heaps of flowers, and the S.P. scuttling round to get the spare room ready for her and the dressing-room for him, and the Stench off on a bicycle to ask the doctor to look in, and 'My 'Ilda' for a cab. After that I said to Nannie, 'Come and help me look out some things for her, nighties and something pretty to sit up in.'

And then I turned to my brother, who was sitting silently.

'Why, Ross, I couldn't do anything else? You don't mind Mr Williams coming, do you?' Suddenly his Irish grandmother came on top, and he exploded violently and unexpectedly in that way he has.

'What a system,' he stormed, 'what a church, that can so sweat its ministers that their families have not enough to eat, and gentlefolk are reduced to wearing other people's old clothes and being glad to get them. It's enough to make one sick, and I suppose they call it "holy poverty." It wouldn't make me feel very holy to see my wife hoping some beastly society would send her an old nightgown and have the cheek to call it charity. Surely if it's necessary to help the clergy at all we ought to give the best we can, as if we were giving to Him. Anyway, I won't have you give Mrs Williams your old clothes, Meg. If it wasn't that Michael was so disgustingly well off it might be you. Thank goodness I've got plenty of money; here, buy her all she wants and if it isn't enough tell me,' and he pitched into my astonished hands all the loose money from his pockets and a note-case stuffed with notes. 'And then you ask me if I mind,' he stormed, 'when the boot is on the other leg. He may mind meeting me. I wasn't decently civil when he called the other day, sneered at him because he looked unbrushed, when he'd probably been up all night. Why, I'm not fit to black his boots. It's all my accursed temper and my damnable pride.' And he flung out of the nursery into his own room and slammed the door.

'Oh, Nannie,' I said, 'isn't he funny? he hasn't been in such a bate for years; of course I never meant to give her my old clothes.'

'Of course you didn't, dearie, he'll remember in a minute, don't you fret.'

'Shall I go after him and tell him so?'

'Oh, I should let him bide, poor lamb.'

'So I let him 'bide,' though anything less like a lamb than Ross at that moment wasn't conceivable.

We smuggled out some nighties, so that the maids shouldn't see, and a blue dressing-gown, and a little quilted coat to match, and some soft blue shoes, and a cap or two, and a shawl and pretty things like that to suit an invalid, and when I got to Mrs Williams's house I packed them all in her own suit-case and brought her in a cab to Gidger's Cottage.

Nannie solemnly unpacked for her, and said,--

'How pretty your things are, ma'am, if you won't think it a liberty for me to say so,' which was considerably more tactful than my remark about the nighties. And the invalid blushed quite nicely and looked at me reprovingly.

Daddy always said that Nannie couldn't tell a lie and came out in a cold perspiration if she even tried, but I think her first and last will be forgiven her. So we got Mrs Williams to bed, she was very exhausted. The doctor came and said that she was threatened with appendicitis and that if this attack could be warded off she ought to be sent to the sea and get quite strong and then have the operation.

While I was waiting in the firelight for dinner a chastened Ross appeared. He slipped his arm round me and hid his face in my hair.

'Oh, Meg,' he said, 'I am a beast.'

'I was wrongfully accused!'

'Nannie told me about the ripping things you've given her; I ought to be kicked for saying it.'

'Oh, Ross, what rot, what about that fat case of notes?'

'Well, I can't give him my new kilt, can I?' with a ghost of a laugh. 'I wish I hadn't been so cool to the chap, but clothes with the remains of the last meal on simply make me curl up. I can't help it, I do try and not let it show. I will be deadly civil now, I'll have my party smile on all the time,' said my repentant brother.

Ross in white rags of penitence so amused me that I felt I would like to keep him humble a little longer. The boot is nearly always on the other leg, so I said, very gravely, hoping he wouldn't feel me giggle,--

'You see, Ross, it was your damnable temper and your accursed pride.'

Then with amazing suddenness the boot was on the usual leg. 'I won't have you say those words, Meg, and understand if I let you have these people here, you're not to get fagged out. Michael says so in every letter he writes me. I shall wire for a nurse for her in the morning, and you're to get somebody extra in the kitchen, and as you don't seem able to manage those women, I've told Sam to do something. Michael sent me a prepaid wire to-day saying you'd said you were hungry, and what was being done about it.'

I was just about to protest when Mr Williams came into the hall, so the conversation changed abruptly. He was quite spruced up, shaved, and looked heaps better. I saw Ross give one fastidious glance at the spotted clothes, but he was very nice to him at dinner and talked with charming deference. When half a spoon of soup went down the ill-used coat, I saw Ross slowly freeze and curl up, but he violently uncurled himself and said, 'Oh, rotten luck, sir,' and helped poor Mr Williams mop it up.

I slipped upstairs quite early to see how the invalid was, and found her inclined to be sleepy, and as I bent over her she whispered, 'I can't thank you, but "Inasmuch," He said.'

Ross peeped round my door about eleven and found me writing.

'Did _I_ do it all right at dinner, Mrs Ellsley?' he began, mimicking 'My 'Ilda.' 'You look quite sweet in that cap and jacket, Meg.' And then he added hastily, lest I should be puffed up with pride like Pau-Puk-Keewis, 'but I thought Michael had forbidden you to read in bed.'

'He has, but I'm not reading, I'm just writing.'

'Humph,' said Ross, 'could I--would it--do you think it would offend him if I got Sam to--brush and--er sponge them, Meg? Goodness,' he ejaculated, pulling out his watch, 'do you know what the time is?'

'Twenty past,' I said, looking at mine.

'Twenty past what?'

'I don't know, the hour hand slips round, but twenty past anything can't be late; if it were five to, now, it might be different, Ross.'

'Well, anyway, give me that pen, Meg. You're not going to write another word, and I'll have that watch mended to-morrow. Give it me.'