Chapter IX

While I stood in the yard cogitating, a woman whose white-spotted blue dress was for the most part covered by a very white apron emerged from the scullery door, holding one hand over her eyes to shade them from the morning sun.

'Ha!' she said, in a managing tone; 'so you're the new lad, are you?' I smiled somewhat bashfully, this being a question I was not yet in a position to answer definitely. 'Well, you're to come into breakfast anyhow, and be sure and rub your boots on the-- Oh, you haven't any. Well, rub your feet, then. Come on! I must see to my fire.'

So I followed her through the scullery (a spacious and airy place) into the kitchen, having first carefully rubbed the dust off my horny soles on the door-mat. And then, with a boy's ready adaptability in the matter of meals, I gave a good account of myself behind a plate of bacon and eggs, with plentiful bread and butter and tea, though I had broken my fast in the bush an hour or two earlier by polishing off the sketchy remains of the previous night's supper, washed down by water from a bright creek.

Domestic capability was the quality most apparent in my breakfast companion. Her age, I should say, was nearer fifty than forty, but she was exceedingly well-preserved; and she was called, as she explained when we sat down, Mrs. Gabbitas. That in itself, I reflected, probably recommended her warmly to Mr. Perkins. (I guessed in advance that he might refer to the lady as the Gabbitacious one; and he did, more than once, in my hearing.)

'Nick Freydon's your name, I'm told. Oh, well, that's all right then.'

Mrs. Gabbitas always spoke, not alone as one having authority, but, and above all, as one who managed all affairs, things, and people within her reach, as indeed she did to a great extent. A most capable and managing woman was Mrs. Gabbitas. I adopted an air of marked deference towards her, I remember; in part from motives of policy, and partly too because her capability really impressed me. Before the bacon was finished we had become quite friendly. I had learned that my hostess had a full upper set of artificial teeth--quite a distinction in those days--and that on a certain occasion, I forget now at what exact period of her life, she had earned undying fame by being called upon by name, from the pulpit of her chapel, to rise in her place among the congregation and sing as a solo the anthem beginning: 'How beautiful upon the mountains!' I gathered now and later that this remarkable event formed in a sense the pivot upon which Mrs. Gabbitas's career turned. Having spent all her life in Australia, she had not been presented at Court; but, alone, unaccompanied, and from her place among the chapel congregation, she had, in answer to the minister's call, made one service historic by singing 'How beautiful upon the mountains!' It was a pious and pleasant memory, and I admit the story of it did add to her dignity in my eyes. Her false teeth, though admittedly a distinction at that period, did not precisely add to her dignity. They were somehow too mobile, too responsive in front to the forces of gravitation, for a talkative woman.

'Has he given you a name yet?' she asked, as we rose from the table, giving her head a jerk as she spoke in the direction of the little pantry, in which I gathered there was a revolving hatch communicating with the dining-room.

'Well, he called me "Nickperry,"' I said, 'or "Peripatacious Nick."'

'Ah! Yes, that sounds like one of his,' she said, apparently weighing the name and myself, not without approval. 'There's nothing nor nobody he hasn't got some name for. He don't miscall me to me face, for I'd allow no person to do such. But in speakin' to Missis, I've heard him refer to me with some such nonsensical words as "Gabbitular" and "Gabbitaceous," or some such rubbish, although no one wouldn't ever think such a thing of me--nobody but him, that is. But he means no harm, y'know. There's no more vice in the man than--than in Bella there.'

She pointed with a wooden spoon toward the open window, through which we could see the red cow, still contentedly chewing over the memories of her last meal.

'No, there's no harm in him, or you may be sure I wouldn't be here; but he's a great character, is Mr. Perkins; a regler case, he is, an' no mistake. Well, this won't get my kitchen cleaned up--and Sunday morning, too! You might take out that bucket of ashes for me. You'll find the heap where they go down in the little yard behind the stable. There now! That's what comes o' talkin'! If I didden forget to ask a blessin', an' you an orphan, too, I believe! F'what we've received. Lor', make us truly thangful cry-say-carmen--Off you go!'

Her eyes were screwed tightly shut while the words of the gabbled invocation passed her lips, and opened widely as, with its last mysterious syllables, she dropped the wooden spoon she had been holding and turned to her fire. The fire was always 'my' fire to worthy Mrs. Gabbitas. So was the kitchen, for that matter, the scullery, the pantry, and all the things that therein were. Indeed, she frequently spoke of 'my' dining-room table, bedrooms, silver, front hall, windows, and the like. Even the meals served to Mr. and Mrs. Perkins were, until eaten, 'my dining-room breakfast,' 'my dining-room tea,' and so forth.

On my way back from the ash-heap with Mrs. Gabbitas's bucket, I almost collided with Mr. Perkins, as he rolled swiftly and silently into view from round the end of the rustic pergola, between the house yard and the big cedar.

'Aha! The Peripatacious one! Tssp! Yes. Mrs. Perkins wants a word with you, youngfellermelad. Come on this way. She's on the front verandah.'

I found myself involuntarily seeking to emulate Mr. Perkins's remarkable method of locomotion. But I might as well have sought to mimic an albatross or a balloon. It was not only his splendid rotundity which I lacked. The difference went far beyond that. He had oiled castors running on patent ball bearings, and I was but the ordinary pedestrian youth.

We found Mrs. Perkins reclining on a couch on the front verandah, a very gaily coloured dust-rug covering the lower part of her figure. Like many people in Australia she could hardly be classified socially; or, perhaps, I should say she did not possess in any marked form the characteristics which in England are associated with this or that social grade. If there was nothing of the aristocrat about her, it might be said that she was not in the least typically 'middle-class'; and I am sure the severest critic would have hesitated to say that hers were the manners, disposition, or outlook of any 'lower' class. Yet she had married an itinerant cobbler, or at best a 'pedestrialatory specialist,' and, I am sure, without the smallest sense of taking a derogatory step.

Mrs. Perkins was the more a revelation to me perhaps, because, as it happened, Mrs. Gabbitas had said nothing whatever about her. I learned presently that she had not stood upon her feet for more than ten years. I was never told the exact nature of the disease from which she suffered, but I know she had lost permanently the use of her legs, and that she was not allowed to sit up in a chair for more than an hour at a time. She never moved anywhere without her husband. He carried her from one room to another, and at times to different parts of the garden; always very skilfully, and without the slightest appearance of exertion. I think it likely she did not weigh more than six or seven stone. Whenever I saw her carried, there was always draped about her a gaily coloured rug or large shawl; and she was for ever smiling, or actually laughing, or making some quaintly humorous little remark. I wondered sometimes if she had borrowed her playfulness in speech from her husband, or if he had borrowed from her. I do not think I ever met a happier pair.

'So here you are!' she said, as we drew near. Her tone suggested that my coming were the arrival of a very welcome and long-looked-for guest. 'You see, Nick, I am so lazy that I never go to any one; and people are so kind that every one comes to me, sooner or later.'

I experienced a desire to do something graceful and chivalrous, and did nothing, I suspect, but grin awkwardly and shuffle my toes in the dust. It seemed to me clumsy and rude to stand erect before this crippled little lady, yet impossible to adopt any other attitude. Mr. Perkins had subsided, softly as a down cushion, on the edge of the verandah. But he had no angles, and I had no curves. Mr. Perkins removed his hat and caressingly polished that glistening orb, his head, with a large rainbow-hued handkerchief.

'You see, Insect,' he said, beaming upon his wife, 'this young feller, Nickperry, an orphantual lad, as I explained, has taken a fancy to Dursley.'

'And you've taken a fancy to Nickperry, I suppose--as you call him.'

The master waved his fat arms to demonstrate his aloofness from fancies. 'Well, we want a new handy lad,' he said; 'and this peripatacious young chap comes strolling along just as Bella wants milking. The Gabbitual one says he's all right.' This is an elaborate stage aside.

'And how did Bella behave, Nick?' asked the mistress.

'She gave down her milk very nicely--madam,' I said, conscious of a blush over the matter of addressing this little lady.

'Merely a passing weakness for the servileacious, inherited from feudalising ancestors,' said Mr. Perkins in an explanatory tone to his wife. And then to me: 'This is Missis Perkins, Nickperry, not "Madam." When you want to speak to the Missis, you must always come and find her, because she don't get about much, do you, Pig-an'-Whistle?'

One of the points of difference between husband and wife, in their spoken whimsicalities, was that the man had no sense of shame and the wife had. Mr. Perkins was no respecter of persons. He would have addressed his wife as 'Blow-fly,' or 'Sossidge,' or 'Piggins,' or by any of the ridiculous names of the sort that he affected, in the presence of the queen or his own handy lad. I have overheard similar expressions of playful ribaldry upon his wife's lips many a time, but never when I was obviously and officially in their presence.

'And what about pay, Nickperry? How do you stand now on the wages question? What did the Drooper start on, Whizz?' This last question was addressed to Mrs. Perkins, whose real name, as I learned later--never once heard upon her husband's lips--was Isabel.

'Eight shillings,' replied Mrs. Perkins. 'But, of course, wages have risen a good bit since then.'

'Yes, yes; the gas of the agitators does sometimes serve to inflate wages; I'll say that for the beggars. What do you say, Nickperry?'

'Well, si--Mister Perkins----'

'He always calls me "Smister." It's a friendly way they have in England, like the eye-glass and the turned-up trousers.'

In her smile Mrs. Perkins managed to convey merriment, sympathy for me as the person chaffed, and humorous disapproval of her husband. I would gladly have worked for her for nothing, for admiration of her bright eyes.

'I was going to say that I'd be willing to work for whatever you liked, till you saw whether I suited you or not,' I managed to explain.

Mrs. Perkins nodded approvingly, and her husband said: 'That's a very fair offer. You have an engagious way with you, Nickperry; and so we'll engage you at ten bob and all found for a start. How's that, Whizkers?'

The mistress assented pleasantly, and added: 'You'll tell Mrs. Gabbitas to see to the room, George, won't you, and--and to give Nickperry what he needs? She will understand. I dare say he'd like a bath.'

I blushed red-hot at this, but Mrs. Perkins kindly refrained from looking my way, and the interview ended. Then, like a dinghy in the wake of a galleon, I followed my new employer to the rearward parts of the establishment.