“WELL, SO THIS is the background from which we are to face the world!” said Clara Bell, bending towards her two companions. “I hope it will prove an advantageous setting for us.”
“It is quite a good house,” said Maria Jennings, the elder of these, standing with her eyes prominent with interest, though her tone matched her words.
“That is not much to say for it,” said the youngest of the three, in the tone of the leader of them.
“Well, I mean it is a very good little house indeed,” said the second speaker.
“It is not so very little,” said Anna Donne, turning and going through the door, as if she were pushing her way. “And it will keep the weather off us. I believe it is wind-proof and watertight.”
Miss Jennings followed with an air of adapting herself as a matter of course to Anna’s moods, and Miss Bell walked, upright and deliberate, after them, looking about in self-possession and interest.
Anna Donne was a short, high-shouldered woman of thirty, with a large head that seemed to dwarf her height; round, open hazel eyes set under a receding forehead and close to an irregular nose; and an unusual reddish tinge in her hair and brows, that contributed to an odd appearance. Her father’s first cousin, Clara Bell, known as Claribel to the family, and to as many people outside it as she could contrive, was a tall, thin, upright woman of fifty-six, with an air of being distinguished and good-looking, that made her small, rough features a surprise; carefully dressed grey hair, that she frequently touched with a view to her reassurance; and a rather discordant voice, that was generally used, and often raised, to draw attention to herself. Maria Jennings, whose daily name was Jenney, and who was housekeeper in the motherless home, was a woman of similar age but different attributes; having a frame at once spare and sturdy, small and strong; prominent features that seemed to rise from her face with eagerness or interest; large, gentle, happy eyes, an even, almost absent manner, and an air of asking little from life, and being content and almost excited when she got it.
“What made you choose the house?” she said, coming to a sudden pause in the hall, as if she must be satisfied on the preliminary point, before passing on to others.
“Well, we had to live somewhere,” said Anna, in her rather rough tones, pursuing her way without turning.
“But there must have been other houses,” said Jenney, taking some running steps after her.
“Why must there in a place where the inhabitants are few and far between?”
“Oh, I suppose there were very few,” said Jenney, pausing to grasp the circumstance.
“There were three or four others, too large or too small, or too dear or too cheap, or too ugly or too pretty, or something.”
“A house could hardly be too pretty,” said Jenney, in a tone of speaking to a child.
“There is a certain sort of prettiness that I could not face.”
“Indeed no,” said Claribel, seeming to shrink into herself.
“But it would be as well to have it cheap,” said Jenney, in a more tentative tone.
“A certain sort of cheapness!” said Claribel, bending towards her cousin.
“Well, I think this avoids both,” said Anna. “I think we can settle here, without feeling either pretentious or too easily satisfied.”
“If we escape the first, it is enough,” said Claribel. “I should be much less troubled by the second. But I think this house will take our stamp; and if it becomes our own, we will ask no more of it.”
“We are very fortunate to have it,” said Jenney, speaking for Anna’s ears. “And there is not much to be done to it, is there?”
“There is nothing now,” said Anna. “What was necessary has been done.”
“So you had to attend to all that!” said Jenney, in a tone of appreciation.
“And it was a more complex business than might appear.”
“We are very grateful to you,” said Claribel. “For laying the foundations, and leaving us free to complete the artistic whole.”
“We shall all do our share of the last,” said Anna. “But the fundamental part had to be done. And Father did not give the right kind of help.”
“No, I don’t suppose he did,” said Jenney, in a tone of suddenly seeing the matter in all its bearings.
“He wanted a bargain, and did not know where to stop. I also inclined to one, but I knew how far we could go. It is no good to think that other people are out to serve our interests.”
“Masculine arrogance, masculine simplicity, whatever it is!” said Claribel.
“Oh, I wonder if the boys will like the house,” said Jenney, recalled to the male half of the community.
“There is no reason why they should not,” said Anna, “if it appeals to other people.”
Jenney again took some little, rapid steps to overtake her. Claribel followed with her calmer, longer tread, her small, alert, black eyes darting from point to point.
“The bookcase will stand here,” said Jenney, in a final tone, pausing at a bend in the hall.
“Here or there or somewhere,” said Anna, hardly glancing back.
“There isn’t anywhere else where it could go,” said Jenney, in grasp of the accommodation that she was on her way to discover.
“There is Father’s upstairs study.”
“Is his study to be upstairs?”
“Well, I implied it, didn’t I?”
“Will he like that?” said Jenney.
“He prefers to sit upstairs when he can. In the last house he clearly could not.”
“No, there wasn’t a room for him, was there?” said Jenney, in almost agitated recalling of the situation. “How good he has been about it all these years!”
“Wonderful, not to complain about what could not be helped,” said Claribel. “So much more than should be expected by our humble sex.”
“Well, now that demand upon him will cease,” said Anna. “But others may succeed it, with a family of relations living at a stone’s throw.”
“What a different life for all of you!” said Jenney, standing with a withdrawn expression to follow the change.
“I am not conscious of so much misgiving,” said Claribel “I feel that my personality is wasted, if it is not allowed a certain play on other people’s.”
“I don’t look forward with too much confidence,” said Anna. “I have not discovered why there is this advantage in our presence.”
“I always feel that my company is a boon to those who have it,” said Claribel, bending her head and hardly articulating the guilty words.
“It is Father who is the desired person in this case.”
“Oh, I do not withdraw from equal competition with him. I do not believe in these foregone conclusions.”
Anna pushed on in the laborious, ungainly manner that seemed to be the outcome of her physique. Her hands and feet were too small for her frame, and her movements were stiff and over-mature, though her face was young for her age. Claribel paid her no attention, and Jenney regarded her with the unthinking acceptance of one who had brought her up from birth, and never paused to consider whether the process was worth while. The feeling was tempered now by a touch of submissiveness, that was hardly enough to disturb her ease.
“I wonder how Reuben will take to the house,” she said, with an increase of feeling.
“Why should he be an exception?” said Anna.
“Well, in a sense he can’t escape being one, can he?”
“I hope I am to have a room assigned to me, with due thought for my individuality,” said Claribel.
“Could he have a room on the ground floor?” said Jenney to Anna, in a manner of proffering a wistful personal request.
“There is a room behind the dining-room, that I had chosen for him. It is underneath yours.”
“Oh, then I can hear him at any minute of the day or night!” said Jenney, in a tone of hailing good news.
“Shall we push on and see the rooms designed for ourselves?” said Claribel, who was obviously in suspense.
“I will take you round and show you how I have allotted them,” said Anna, in a manner of introducing the final decision. “And we will not waste time on empty questions and comments. The furniture should arrive at any moment.”
“Oh, I hope it will come!” said Jenney.
Anna, without allusion to the immediate breach of her condition, walked forward in single purpose. Jenney followed in compliant silence, and Claribel with an air of submitting in patience to an interlude.
“The drawing-room and dining-room are what we should expect,” said Anna, throwing open the doors. “The kitchens are below them. The staircase leads to those above.”
“A natural use for a staircase,” murmured Claribel to Jenney, as she set foot upon it. “I am glad we are to be allowed to put it to its purpose.”
“This is the third bedroom,” said Anna, casting a half-indulgent look at her cousin, and making no reference to her assignment of the first and second to her father and herself. “I have seen worse rooms.”
“Oh, I think I can make this room my own,” said Claribel, advancing and looking round with all her interest. “The little balcony makes a distinguishing feature. I don’t think I saw one outside the other rooms.” She spoke with a hint of anxiety, and bent towards Anna in humorous admission. “Now that I have seen my own room, I will take an interest in other people’s.”
“No, they haven’t a balcony,” said Anna, answering her real meaning. “They are much what they would be in this kind of house.”
“I think I am satisfied with them for you,” said Claribel, turning after a moment of inspection with a touch of relief. “They are light and pleasant, and not so much better than mine, that they put me out of conceit with it. And my little balcony gives me great satisfaction. One can make so much of an individual touch, or I always feel that I can. My flowers will be quite different from those in the garden. I can’t help feeling that degree of self-confidence.”
“The two little rooms are very nice,” said Jenney, referring to her own and Anna’s youngest brother’s. “Reuben cannot feel alone, with me just above him.”
“And you will never have a moment’s peace by day or night,” said Claribel.
“Well, it is bad for him, when his leg aches, and he is alone in the dark,” said Jenney, in a tone that lingered on the scene.
“His leg has not ached for years,” said Anna.
Jenney was silent, having yet to disengage her mind from this point of the past.
“And now for our inspection of the upper floor and the boys’ quarters,” said Claribel. “And then a return to our own rooms to concentrate our attention upon them. That amount of egotism is permissible in us.”
Jenney smiled at her in kindness, accustomed to showing sympathy with everyone in the house, and too engrossed in human affairs to find it difficult.
“Bernard’s room, Esmond’s room, spare room, Father’s study,” said Anna, walking about the landing and throwing open doors.
“What about the servants’ room?” said Jenney, clasping her hands and then unclasping them, as if fearing disapproval of the action.
“Up there,” said Anna, with a gesture towards another staircase. “We need not trail up and inspect it.”
“Anyhow we will not,” said Claribel.
“I think I will just run up,” said Jenney, seeming to be poised between one world and another, and then making a dash towards the second. “Then I can tell them about it.”
“I should have thought they could judge of it for themselves,” said Anna to Claribel, meeting a smile of fellow-feeling that arose from personal content.
“It is quite a good room,” said Jenney, returning and remaining with her eyes on the staircase, as if she must reserve a degree of comment. “And there are two good lumber rooms as well. It is all very nice.”
“Well, I am glad you approve of it,” said Anna. “It took some seeking and finding.”
“It is a beautiful home,” said Jenney, overcoming her disinclination to enthusiastic phrase. “We ought to be very happy in it. It was clever of you to find it. Of course this last staircase is rather steep.”
“Done to economise space,” said Anna, throwing it a glance.
“The servants will be here this afternoon,” said Jenney, as though the disadvantage might perhaps be remedied before this stage.
“Well, no doubt they will have to arrive like the rest of us.”
“I daresay the resemblance will end there,” said Claribel.
“They will expect their room to be ready,” said Jenney, in a voice that seemed to have no inflections.
“It will be ready as soon as they make it so,” said Anna. “And I shall expect them to do the same with ours.”
“I hope they will settle down in the house.”
“If they don’t, we must find others who will.”
“These have got used to our ways,” said Jenney.
“We have none that is different from other people’s, except that you and Father don’t expect enough from them.”
Jenney’s mind had not been on the demands of herself and Mr. Donne, as her eyes, resting on the two other claimants of attention, betrayed.
“Spoiling people does not make them happier,” said Anna, voicing a theory that Jenney always thought a strange one.
“It only exalts them in their own estimation,” said Claribel, as if this were indeed a thing not to be done.
“Here are the van and the men!” said Anna. “For a wonder up to time.”
“Oh, we are fortunate!” breathed Jenney. “If they had been late, the house would not have been comfortable before to-night.”
“Well, there are only three women to be afflicted,” said Claribel. “And we do not take such things as hardly as men.”
Jenney did not say that she was thinking of a larger number of women.
“It would have been odd if they had dared to be late, after what I said,” said Anna, in a grim tone, going out to meet the men.
Jenney looked as if her own methods might not have succeeded here, but followed with an air of deprecating any others.
“Those large things straight into the dining-room,” said Anna, with a wave of her hand.
“Wouldn’t they like something to drink first?” whispered Jenney.
“Work first, drink afterwards,” said Anna, in an audible undertone.
“I hope that my private and personal things have sustained no harm,” said Claribel, looking round with a smile for her self-regard. “Our own possessions acquire such an appeal. We feel that they are owed tender treatment.”
“I hope the men feel the same,” said Anna, hurrying to and from with a preoccupied face. “Everything belongs to somebody.”
“But these things belong to me,” said Claribel, throwing back her head.
Later in the day two figures came up the drive, the taller stooping over the shorter in a manner of sympathetic protection. Jenney ran out to meet them in an eagerness that she checked on her way, as if there were some rashness in betraying it.
“So you are here; I knew you would be,” she said, as though some doubt might have, been felt on the matter. “You are just in time for tea. Your room is ready. We remembered that you liked one large one better than two small.”
“Cook cannot sleep alone,” said the taller woman, in a flat, deep voice. “She is of too nervous a type.”
“You will like this room,” said Jenney, in almost excited assurance. “It is very large and bright. That is the window up there.”
The housemaid raised her eyes to the window, putting back her head rather further than was necessary, and then sweeping her eyes from the window to the ground.
“There are only two real storeys to the house; that is, only three floors above the ground floor, if you count the small one you have to yourselves,” said Jenney, seeming to resort to complication to cover some truth. “You will like to go up, when you have had your tea.” Her tone drew attention to the more immediate prospect.
“There is a basement,” said Ethel, in a tone that added no more, as no more was necessary.
“Unusual in the country,” said Cook, using her voice for the first time, and then not seeming to do so completely, as it could barely be heard.
Ethel turned eyes of grave concern upon Cook.
“I never know why maids in the country are supposed to require less privacy than those in towns,” said Jenney, as if speaking by the way.
“How is our luggage to come from the station?” said Ethel, in an even but somehow ruthless manner.
“It will come to-morrow with the master’s and the young gentlemen’s. It has all been thought out,” said Jenney, with a touch of triumph. “You need not worry about that. Have you things for to-night?”
“I can manage for Cook and myself,” said Ethel, glancing at the bag in her hand.
“Well, come in and put that down,” said Jenney, as if offering a further benefit. “You need not take it to the kitchen. Put it here in the hall.”
Ethel glanced about the hall, as if it might be fraught with some risk, and walked on with her burden.
“It is only one more storey to carry it back,” she said, as if this could hardly be taken into account under present conditions.
“How did you come from the station?” said Jenney.
“In the fly,” said Ethel, in her deepest tones, glancing down the drive. “We could have driven up to the house, if we had known the path was so wide. Cook need not have taken a step.”
Cook was short and thin and pale, with yellowish hair and lashes, no discernible brows, prominent, pale blue eyes, a violently receding mouth and chin, and a large, bare, oval forehead. Ethel was tall and dark and upright, and had an imposing presence in her professional garb. She believed that she bore a likeness to Claribel, and in height and in asymmetry and insignificance of feature she equalled, if she did not resemble her. The two maids often exchanged a glance, a practice that does not encourage an observer, and in this case did so less than in most. It seemed that their feeling had been used up when it passed from each other, and there been a full expenditure of it. If it was hinted that their devotion bordered on excess, Ethel would reply with quiet finality that they were first cousins. When they were asked their ages, she answered for both that they were about the same age. This was not true, as Cook was ten years the elder, and now over fifty; but Ethel resented the circumstance for her, and drew a veil over it. Cook never replied to questions; she merely looked at a questioner with a smile, which the latter could never be sure was not some other expression, as it took place so far behind the rest of her face. No one repeated the questions, and Jenney had no need to put them, as she relied on her instinct in such matters. No one knew Ethel’s surname, or knew for certain that Cook had any names. The latter was sensitive on the matter, and flushed when it was broached; and Ethel would interpose with the quiet statement that Cook preferred to be called Cook. She addressed her in this way even in their personal relation, a circumstance which to Jenney was ground for the belief that their cousinship was of recent origin.
“Now you must want your tea at once. It is all ready for you in the new kitchen,” said Jenney, using the suggestion as a cover for leading the way to the basement, and putting a festive note into the last words.
“It would help Cook to keep up,” said Ethel, stretching a warning hand towards Cook, as they approached the dim staircase.
“We shall get used to the extra stairs,” said Cook, in a tone the more courageous for being faint.
“Oh, yes, you will,” said Jenney, with a confidence that was perhaps justified by her knowledge of how often they would traverse them. “You will run up and down without noticing them in a day or two.” She ran down herself, to show that she had reached this stage.
“We can’t get out of the basement without them,” said Ethel, putting the same thought in another form.
Cook came in silence to the kitchen table, and gave a smile to Jenney, who was enabled by experience to recognise it as smile. Ethel walked without comment to the kettle, and made and poured the tea, and after carefully supplying Cook, casually supplied herself and sat down at the board.
“Did you enjoy your drive?” said Jenney.
“The fly?” said Ethel, raising her eyes as she stirred her cup. “Well, the air was good, but Cook felt the jolting. She won’t be able to go right upstairs just yet.”
Cook gave Jenney another smile, which this time no one could have recognised.
“Did you not bring any of your luggage?” said Jenney.
“We thought that, as we could not bring it all, we might as well leave it,” said Ethel, with the dependence on others in matters outside her own sphere, that came from her life. Cook looked up at Jenney, as if there might conceivably be a criticism implied in her words.
“It can easily come with the other luggage,” said Jenney, hastening to correct such an impression.
“Those that bring it, might as well bring it all,” said Ethel.
“It is all one trouble,” said Cook.
“There is Miss Anna,” said Ethel, without changing her tone, but lifting her cup to her lips to make the most of a fleeting opportunity.
“It is strange how you know a footstep on different stairs,” said Cook.
“You would always recognise some,” said Ethel.
“Their steps are themselves,” said Cook.
Ethel rose and stood with her back to her companions, as if this secured both her and them some privacy, produced a cap and apron from her bag, and without any sign of haste turned to face her employer in conventional garb.
“Well, Cook and Ethel, so you have arrived in time for tea,” said Anna, in a brisk tone that seemed to suggest that other objects had been lost sight of.
“Good afternoon, Miss Anna,” said Ethel.
Cook framed the words with her lips, as she rose from her seat.
“You look tired, Cook,” said Anna, speaking as if fatigue were a light matter.
Cook smiled and almost glanced at her chair.
“Oh, pray sit down, Cook,” said Anna, with a touch of impatience. “You won’t have much to do to-day. Miss Jennings brought some cold food with her. There will not be any real cooking to-night.”
Cook rested her eyes on the stove, as if such process would have to be postponed for investigation and adjustment. Her sparing use of words made less difference than might be thought.
“Well, do you think you will like this house?” said Anna, who did not subdue impulse to diplomacy.
“Well, we did not really want a change,” said Ethel.
“You often complained of the other one.”
“There are disadvantages everywhere, Miss Anna.”
“And they strike you at first,” murmured Cook.
“So complaint is inevitable, I suppose,” said Anna, taking a seat on the table and swinging her legs.
Cook glanced from Anna to the tea-things, in silent recognition of their juxtaposition.
“I am sitting on your tea-table, am I?” said Anna, getting off and speaking as if this were a new idea.
Ethel quietly placed a chair.
“You have more room both upstairs and downstairs in this house.”
“The other was an easy kitchen, Miss Anna,” said Ethel, with a note of reproach.
“Homelike,” uttered Cook.
“You often said it was crowded and stuffy.”
Ethel and Cook sent their eyes round this one, as if they would not call attention to its attributes.
“A place is always ten times as nice as it seems on the first day,” said Jenney, allowing for an only partial acceptance of her words. “And now they would like to see their room. People cannot feel at home until they are comfortable upstairs.” She made the last two words sound in natural conjunction.
“We shall not be able to unpack,” said Ethel, in a tone without feeling.
“Did you not bring your luggage?” said Anna. “Is that all you brought in the cab? You might as well have walked.”
“Cook could not have walked, Miss Anna. A quarter of a mile is her limit.”
“But the man could have put your luggage on the cab. That would not have imposed much strain upon her.”
“The fly could not take our large trunks, Miss Anna. So we thought we might as well bring what we needed for the night.” said Ethel, her tone not disguising the ominous touch in her words.
“Well, I would not waste a cab like that.”
“Oh, Cook has often hailed a fly to save her a hundred yards, Miss Anna,” said Ethel, sufficiently exhilarated by this difference for her face to clear.
“Well, it is your own fault that you can’t get properly established.”
Jenney’s eyes wavered at the light use of such words.
Ethel laid hold of her portmanteau and Cook’s handbag, and Cook rose and stood emptyhanded, ready to give all her strength to the coming ordeal.
“I have the valises,” said Ethel.
“I will lead the way and show you the lie of the land,” said Anna, springing from her seat and running from the room, by way of an object lesson upon the situation.
Cook and Ethel met each other’s eyes with a slight, simultaneous smile, and followed without hastening their steps.
Jenney moved about with a dubious air, putting things in place, or rather disposing them so as to give the best impression. In a moment Ethel re-entered, still bearing her bags, and walked up to her.
“I think Cook will be able to stand it, Miss Jennings,” she said without a change on her face.
Jenney’s features showed no sign of emulating this control, and Ethel gave her a stiff smile and walked from the room. Anna came breathlessly into the kitchen, flung herself into a chair and stretched out her limbs.
“Well, what a lot of effort and contrivance! They force us to do their business as well as our own.”
“They are good women at heart,” said Jenney. “I like Ethel very much.”
“I never get that kind of feeling for them. I always feel a being apart, as if there were a kind of barrier between us.”
“We let them do a good many personal things for us, said Jenney.
“I would not say that. Useful, material things, if you will, but I do not use the term, personal, quite so easily. We could never make a friend of one of them, or I never could. Well, I think my little manœuvre had its effect.”
“There are a good many stairs. We can’t alter that,” said Jenney, resting her eyes on Anna’s prostrate form, as if unable but to recognise that she had not done so.
“Oh, they are so much stronger than we are. They are brought up to be tough from birth,” said Anna, dropping her hands over the sides of her chair in the manner proper to her different training.
“And is that good for them or for us?” said Jenney, in a drier tone.
“It fits in for us both,” said Anna, idly.
“We are very dependent on them.”
“And they on us. They have to earn their living. And they will not do it by jibbing at a few stairs.”
When the footsteps of Cook and Ethel were heard, or rather those of Ethel, as Cook’s made no sound, Anna rose and made a parade of rushing from the room.
“I can’t face any more fuss and trouble. If you are so fond of them, stay and cope with their moods.”
Jenney remained and enjoyed an equal chat with Cook and Ethel. Her position between the family and them gave her an opportunity for living in two sets of lives, and she could not have lived in too many. She relinquished the easiest chair to Cook, who took it with an air of being helpless in such a matter.
“Here is the cold food,” said Jenney. “There are only the vegetables to be done now.”
Ethel rose and without discontinuing her talk, turned back her cuffs and moved to the sink. To prepare the vegetables was Cook’s work, but Ethel placed no reliance on her strength, even though it had been fostered from birth. Perhaps this was further evidence that their intimacy was not of the earliest.
“It is a comfortable bedroom,” said Ethel at length, lifting something out of the water.
“And they are good beds,” said Cook, in the voice of one whose thoughts would turn to this item.
“You must go to yours in good time to-night,” said Jenney.
Cook sighed at the meaning under the words, and by leaning back with her feet raised, contrived that the prospect should be as little removed as possible.
“I can wash up the dinner things,” said Ethel. “The cooking I never could take to.”
“I was always inclined to the skilled work,” said Cook. “And it is better for Ethel to have the place where her height tells.”
“She looks very nice when she is waiting at table,” said Jenney.
Ethel’s expression did not change, as it might have at a new idea.
“There is Mr. Bernard coming up the drive,” she said, in a tone that did not seem to introduce another subject. “I thought the gentlemen were to come to-morrow.”
“Mr. Bernard does not follow others,” said Cook. “Some can be a law to themselves.”
Bernard Donne entered the house, exchanged a word with his sister, and descended to the basement.
“Three stairs at one step,” said Ethel, looking at Cook with an approach to a smile.
Cook returned the smile in a manner that did credit to her sympathies, considering the sphere in which they were required to function.
“He is never detained by Miss Anna,” she said.
“Well, Jenney,” said the eldest son of the family, “I do not feel that this house will ever be a home to me.”
“You will have some tea, sir?” said Cook, who had risen and replaced the kettle on the stove.
“I will have any comfort that is available. And I will have it here. It is known that the kitchen is the nicest room in the house.”
Cook and Ethel met this remark in a natural silence.
“It is not so far from your dinner time, sir,” said Ethel, on a note of warning.
“One meal never spoils me for another. It only prepares me for it. I never know why food is a sort of inoculation against other food. Food is not an illness.”
Bernard Donne spoke in an almost serious tone. He was a large, nearly stout young man of thirty-two, with a full, pink face, broad, ordinary features, and bright, unusual, grey eyes. He had indolent, heavy movements, and actually depended on full and frequent meals to avoid fatigue. He had a way of remaining still, while his eyes roved and danced from one thing to another. As Ethel brought his tea, he drew her into a chair by his side.
“It is something that we do not go alone from the cradle to the grave.”
Ethel hastily rose, adjusted her cuffs and returned to the sink, as if this position were more secure for her.
“Anna spoke coldly and almost harshly to me, Jenney. She said my room was not ready, and that the dinner would be cold.”
“Your room will be comfortable, sir,” said Ethel. “And the vegetables will be hot.”
“I have never heard of them cold. And the rest of the dinner must be what I have not heard of at all.”
“You should have given us notice, sir,” said Ethel in grave reproach.
“So my home is not a place where I can walk in at any minute.”
“The furniture only arrived to-day,” said Jenney.
“Of course you have done wonders in the time,” said Bernard. “But those wonders are not as good as other kinds. Cook, will you join me in a muffin?”
“I should not dare, sir.”
“Why does it frighten you?”
“Cook means that muffins disagree with her,” said Jenney.
“It is an odd idea that muffins don’t get on with Cook. It seems to complicate the claims of her calling.”
“I don’t often take the risk myself,” said Ethel, in a dispassionate manner.
“You and I will face it together, Ethel.”
“I have had my tea, thank you, sir,” said Ethel, her tone indicating that Bernard’s view of consecutive meals was by no means her own.
“What have you done with your luggage, Bernard?” said Jenney in sudden thought.
“I added it to a pile that was waiting at the station.”
“Ours,” said Ethel and Cook, at one moment.
“Mine too now,” said Bernard. “We can have a cosy little unpacking together.”
“Did you walk from the station?” said Jenney.
“Walk? Me? If I had done that, I would have carried the luggage. I got a lift in a cart.”
“A tradesman’s cart?” said Ethel, in simple apprehension.
Cook paused in what she was doing, and waited for the answer.
“I think all carts have to do with trade,” said Bernard. “This one had. It was full of closed packages, so I could not tell what trade it was.”
“The man would have told you,” said Jenney, whose interest did not fail in any human matter.
“I don’t mean that I was uninterested, or thought it was not my affair. I just did not think to ask, and he did not think to tell me.”
“Well, the cart will not come to the house,” said Ethel.
“The man said it was going to come every morning,” said Bernard.
Cook and Ethel faced this prospect in silence.
“I had better go to Anna, Jenney. She will say that I have hardly spoken to her.”
“And you have not done much more, have you?” said Jenney.
Cook and Ethel followed Bernard with their eyes, as he left the room.
“He is always himself,” said Ethel.
“The tradesmen’s cart!” said Cook, with the ghost of a smile.
“Well, he does not look as if he had to,” said Ethel.
“It only wants the dignity to carry it off,” said Cook.
“I wish the luggage was here,” said Ethel, on a wistful note. “It is inconvenient to be kept in an unsettled state.”
“I have sent the master a card,” said Jenney, overcoming any obvious haste to reply. “He is sure to think of it to-morrow. It is the last time I shall send anything to that address.” She ended on a note of sentiment, forgetting that, as she never left the family, it might be also the first time; and Cook and Ethel also forgot it, and moved their heads in sympathy.
“We come to the end of chapters,” said Ethel.
“They go past us,” said Cook, sitting down at the table and laying her hand upon it.
Ethel took a seat at her side and closed her fingers over the hand, and Jenney accepted this as a signal for withdrawing. She also accepted it as the signal of a good deal more, and would have been taken aback by the talk that ensued.
“Miss Jennings will have a front place,” said Ethel, with a sigh.
“If anyone in the house,” said Cook.
“We can’t estimate the privilege of living with her,” said Ethel, using words that would have given Jenney not so much a sense of compliment as of security.
“Such an example. And before our eyes,” said Cook, with less feeling for an example in another place.
“You would think that Miss Anna would be influenced by it.”
“A leopard can’t change his spots,” said Cook, moving to the stove with an air of accepting the law of immutability for herself.
“The bell! Miss Anna’s, of course,” said Ethel.
“What can she want on the first night?” said Cook, with her own ideas of cause and effect.
Ethel returned with a grim smile on her face.
“The gentlemen’s rooms are to be done the first thing to-morrow. As if that couldn’t wait for the morning! Bringing a person up for it! She must do it to assert herself.”
“Those do that, who need to,” said Cook.
“If she thinks I am going to begin them to-night, she makes a mistake,” said Ethel, sitting down and locking her hands round her knees, as if to ensure their leisure.
“There are only four of them for dinner,” said Cook.
“And I daresay Miss Jennings would as soon be down here with us,” said Ethel, as if this partly disposed of Jenney’s needs. “To say nothing of Mr. Bernard. I hope the gentlemen will remember the luggage. It was best to bring none of it, as we couldn’t bring it all. And these things are nothing to gentlemen, are they?”