Chapter III: In an Old-Fashioned Household

"Home-keeping hearts are happiest,
For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care—
To stay at home is best."
LONGFELLOW.

HEATHER'S cheeks were scarlet with mortified shame, when she and her sister were turned out of their cousin's room by Abigail.

"She—she almost makes me hate her," she said in a vehement whisper; "but I am sure Mrs. Carter will not stand much from her. I know it is wrong, but I hope she will be well snubbed; and I shall enjoy seeing it!"

Bluebell took the matter lightly. She was a happy-hearted girl with an affectionate sunshiny disposition, and viewed life at present through rose-coloured spectacles. She had also a keen sense of humour, and she laughed now at the remembrance of Abigail's face when Heather inquired for the cup of tea.

"Never mind," she said, "we must not expect Abigail to be different now from what she always is. She is too old to change. Did you see what a lot of luggage Mrs. Carter has brought? I think she is lovely, don't you?"

"Yes," assented Heather, warmly. "I have never seen any one like her. Now let us come into the drawing-room. I wish Abigail would have had the holland covers taken off. I can't bear them."

Mrs. Carter did not make her appearance till dinner was on the table. In fact, she was ten minutes behind time, and came down in a black satin dress with low neck and short sleeves, apologizing very prettily for keeping them waiting. The girls were too well-bred to show their feelings, but cast many a shy admiring glance at her through their long lashes. The pearls round her neck, the glittering bracelets on her white arms and sparkling rings upon her fingers, all appealed to their love of beauty.

She talked and chatted with them on the most trivial subjects through the meal. Abigail moved to and fro with a grim face, and an aching heart. When she had finally left the room, Mrs. Carter came to more personal matters.

"Have you girls ever been to school?"

"No."

"Then who has educated you?"

"Grandmother."

"I always heard her spoken of as a very clever and cultivated woman," Mrs. Carter said slowly. "I wonder what she taught you?"

"Everything," said Bluebell, rashly. "We used to work five hours every day, often six."

"Do you know anything of Algebra, Latin, or Mathematics?"

Bluebell's face fell.

"No."

"How many languages can you speak?"

"We know French fairly well, a little German and Italian."

"Can you sing and play?"

"Heather can play the harp. And I can sing a little. I am not very fond of music."

"Grandmother used to say," said Heather, thoughtfully, "that a woman should be thoroughly grounded in history and geography. She should have plenty of general knowledge, so that she could always be at ease in literary society and conversation. A little music was essential, but the main duties in her life would be housekeeping; and this I think Bluebell and I know to our finger ends."

"Tell me what you can do," said Mrs. Carter, looking kindly at them.

"We will tell you what we do do," said Bluebell, vivaciously. "Heather keeps the accounts, she is better at it than I am. She also looks after a small farm that belongs to us. We get our butter and milk from it, and every week the farmer comes up and does business with her in the study. He says she 'do have a wunnerful head.' She also has charge of the store cupboard, and orders dinner every day. I make all the jam, and potted meat, and pickles, and everything of that sort, and we have a tiny dispensary with simple remedies for the village people, which is my province. The linen cupboard is in my charge too, and I look after all the mending. Sometimes we make jellies and broth for the sick people in the village. Grandmother would have us both learn cooking. She said a woman ought to know it thoroughly, and we can do most things, can't we, Heather?"

Heather assented, adding, "You see, we are a small household, but the villagers look to us for everything. They come up once a week during the winter for soup, and there are always some old and sick who want special attention."

"I dare say your grandmother was more sensible than most people of the present day," said Mrs. Carter. "I do not hold with this college education for women, but times have changed. It is not every girl who is placed in such comfortable circumstances as you are. Now I should like to know if you are all Quakers here?"

"No, we have never been brought up so," said Heather. "There are no Friends about here. Abigail and Rachael used to attend a little meeting in the town, but it is too far for them to walk, and they generally go to chapel. Grandmother never left the house for seven years before she died. Bluebell and I walk over to church, which is two miles away. Mr. Monk is the rector. He is very old and very poor, and we don't see much of him. He comes to us when he wants any special relief for a parishioner."

"Have you no friends? Surely this is not the only big house in the neighbourhood?"

"Our squire lives eight miles off. We don't know him. Grandmother never visited. Our doctor is an old bachelor, and he lives six miles away. We never meet any one in our own station of life!"

"What a life!"

After this ejaculation, Mrs. Carter seemed lost in thought, and then they moved into the drawing-room. She made Heather play to her, and when she was seated at the harp, and Bluebell leant back in a low chair by the fire to listen, Mrs. Carter looked at her young cousins with greater interest than ever. Heather played some old Scotch airs, and then drifted into "Il Trovatore." Her touch was light and sweet, and Mrs. Carter was charmed with the grace and spirit with which she played.

"I feel," she said, when Heather had come to the fire, and taken a seat opposite hers, "that I am in a dream. I have gone back a generation. Do you know that you are utterly unlike most girls of your own age?"

"We have never seen any," said Heather, simply; "at least only the farmers' daughters, and the villagers."

"Did your grandmother expect you would live and die here in seclusion?"

"We thought, till your letter came, that we should have to do it," said Bluebell. Then she added, with a laughing light in her eyes, "Heather was meditating a bold stroke for freedom; may we tell you about it? You won't be shocked?"

"I do not think you two little Puritans will be likely to shock me," was the amused reply. "Tell me, by all means."

Then Heather spoke in hushed tones, with a backward glance at the door, for fear of Abigail's form appearing.

"It is Abigail. She rules us with a rod of iron. You saw how she sent us from your room before dinner. She has been worse than ever since grandmother died. She treats us like tiny children. And Bluebell and I are children no longer. We are mistresses here; we have our own money. Grandmother left everything to us. I know all about it, for I have been over it with Mr. Brody. We have quite enough money to live very comfortably, and—and to travel."

"Yes," put in Bluebell, "and we were going up to London by ourselves. We had hardly settled whether we should dismiss Abigail from our service, or run away without telling her. Of course she would never have allowed us to go to London, we knew that. It would have been more dignified to send her away, but it would have taken a lot of courage to do it, and she is—well—very awe-inspiring!"

"I think we should have been driven to do it," said Heather. "I could not have run away from our own home like a coward; and I have felt lately things were getting desperate. You have come and solved the difficulty. It will be all right now."

"By that you mean I am to do battle on your behalf? Well, we will see."

When tea was brought in by Abigail, she saw the new-comer on the best of terms with the two girls, who, with flushed cheeks and bright eyes, were listening to some of her London experiences. Abigail went out to Rachael, and in tones of despair exclaimed—

"She has bewitched them with her airs and graces. They didn't even so much as look at me when I went in! They're drinking in the poison, and it will be the ruin of their young lives. And I have to stand by and say nothin'!"

She wrung her hands, and Rachael looked aghast at the imperturbable Abigail being so deeply moved.

"We must trust them to the Lord," she said soothingly. "Maybe Mrs. Carter is only young and giddy. She will find this a dull place to linger in. She will come and go, and, when once in London, will forget all about them again. Don't you fret now, don't, for mercy's sake!"

Abigail shook her head, but said no more. She would not tell Rachael her worst fears.

Prayer-time came, and Bluebell very simply asked Mrs. Carter to lead the devotions. She laughed and declined, but watched her young cousin sit up and conduct them with an amused and yet softened look in her eyes.

"And now you are going to bed," she said afterwards. "Well, I will too; it is not much beauty sleep that I get in town!"

But when she was up in her bedroom, she did not retire to rest. Drawing up the writing-table to her fire, she wrote a long letter to her husband. And this was what she wrote:—

"DEAREST OLD HAL,—I think I have tumbled into one of the quaintest and most out of the world households in existence. I have to pinch myself sometimes to make sure that I am not dreaming. How I wish you were here to enjoy it with me. For enjoying it I am, and that most thoroughly. Where shall I begin? With the house itself, I think. It is one of those thoroughly comfortable old-fashioned residences, with thick walls, and picturesque corners and gables, casement windows and deep window-seats, plenty of good old oak about it.

"I could make it simply sweet; but, oh, my dear boy! I think even your inartistic soul would stand aghast at the colours and style of the decorations within! I have been sitting in the drawing-room, and inwardly shuddering all the time at my surroundings. I should think it was furnished sixty or seventy years ago, in the most hideous fashion of our grandmothers, and has never touched since—all gilt and white, with the crudest colours all bunched together, a large long room with four windows. Not a plant or flower in it. Chairs and sofas in brown holland.

"Fancy worsted-work screens, and glass cases of flowers, stuffed birds, and fruit. Well, you're a man; and I can't write to you as I should to a woman, so I will stop. Every room is the same. And yet, with it all, it is thoroughly comfortable, though so inharmonious. I have not seen the grounds, but I believe the garden is not a large one. There are dense shrubberies in all directions. The household goes by clockwork. You never saw such old characters as the two Quaker servants. They and a small boy do all the work of the house between them. How they manage it, I don't know, for I can give them credit for keeping everything in the most beautiful order. The linen and plate are the very best—exquisite, in fact—but I always heard that Quakers were noted for those two items in their households.

"And now I come to the girls. I wonder what you will think of them! I foresee a bright future for them after a little training. Of course, they are in the most hideous garbs imaginable, but it says much for their natural grace that they draw attention to themselves, and not to their dress. They hold themselves well, and are, as far as I have seen them yet, without a trace of self-consciousness. Perfectly simple and natural, but oh, so undeveloped! And yet, sometimes, when I say to myself what babies they are, they will startle me with some words of wisdom or depth of feeling that I feel I don't possess myself! They are tall, slim maidens, with the most lovely eyes and hair, and delicate features and complexions, as like as two peas. I don't yet know them apart.

"They are guarded by a regular dragon, whom I am longing to fight and subdue. She sees in me everything that is evil, and is fiercely determined that I shall not carry off her nurselings. I don't yet know what I shall do with them, but they are too pretty to waste their sweetness on the desert air. Tell me what you advise. Can't you run down from Saturday to Monday? Don't get into mischief while your 'missis' is away, and tell Cyril that if I find the slightest whiff of tobacco in my drawing-room when I return, he shall receive his 'congé' immediately. Don't go to too many theatres, and remember I may be at home any day, so will catch you out before you know it! Your loving—

"IDA."

"P.S.—Imagine no afternoon tea, dinner at six o'clock, and an old-fashioned tea-table with hot-buttered toast and cakes, wheeled into the drawing-room at nine o'clock! Prayers at ten, and then to bed; and if you could have seen the sweet gravity with which one of these children conducted our devotions, and the calm air with which she handed me a huge Bible, I think you would have longed to be good as I did!"

The next morning Mrs. Carter begged to be shown over the house, and whilst Heather was attending to her housekeeping, Bluebell took her round. The study, which had been the girls' nursery and schoolroom in former years, was rather a gloomy-looking room, but opened into a small greenhouse, in which was a large cage of canaries filling the air with their songs. Bluebell's plants and flowers looked flourishing; she was a born gardener, and knew how to pot, plant, and graft to perfection. She took her cousin out into the garden, which had a long stretch of green turf edged with old elm trees, and a few flower beds; and a very small kitchen garden was beyond.

"We get most of our vegetables from the farm. Heather will take you over to see that. We sometimes go there, and make the butter. When Annie was ill—she is the farmer's wife; she used to help in the house, and married our gardener who is now the farmer—when she was ill, after her last baby was born, Heather and I went down and made the butter every day!"

"You are most industrious young people. I shall be quite afraid of you. I am sure you never do anything wrong—now, do you?"

Bluebell's laugh rang out merrily.

"Abigail would tell you how many scoldings we get in a day! But do you know," and the girl's eyes were almost serious as she turned them upon her cousin, "since we have been our own mistresses, we don't seem to have got into half so many scrapes. In fact, when we are left to do exactly as we like, we find that there is no temptation to do what we ought not to do."

"The moral is that you should be always left to yourselves, isn't it? I am afraid you will not be willing to hand yourselves over to my keeping for a little, will you?"

Bluebell looked up eagerly.

"Are you going to offer to take us away with you?"

"I haven't said so. We must talk over it with your sister."