Six of Them E-Book

Cecily Sidgwick

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 368

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

My name is Elizabeth, and I have been married to Nicholas Brooke for twenty-five years. We have seven children, and six of them are girls. Fancy that! Celia, Nancy, Martha, Hester, Jane, Sally. The boy came last but one, and we called him Ambrose. I know a woman who managed her family affairs cleverly. She has six boys and one girl, born after her brothers and therefore sure to marry young.

Leseprobe

SIX OF THEM

By

Cecily Sidgwick

CHAPTER I

My name is Elizabeth, and I have been married to Nicholas Brooke for twenty-five years. We have seven children, and six of them are girls. Fancy that! Celia, Nancy, Martha, Hester, Jane, Sally. The boy came last but one, and we called him Ambrose. I know a woman who managed her family affairs cleverly. She has six boys and one girl, born after her brothers and therefore sure to marry young. Because when there are six young men bringing their friends to the house a girl can pick and choose. Besides boys can always make their way in the world if they have health and brains. But six girls and no money! I stay awake at night sometimes and wonder what lies before them, and at such moments I can see clearly that they ought not to be there at all. There’s a good deal of talk nowadays about equal chances for men and women, but none of my girls, except Nancy, has wanted a career. They are happy at home, they are well behaved, and their brains are not above the average. In some ways all that makes things worse. Sally is only ten, so I put her out of my mind for the present, and Nancy is a medical student. She says she will soon be earning a living, and that if she attains eminence as a surgeon she might make thousands a year. She removed an appendix successfully the other day, and Nicholas is proud of it. I suppose I am too, but only with an effort. I never speak of it as Nicholas does, to all and sundry. He is wrapt up in his children and thinks our rather threadbare home a paradise, but then he has a sanguine disposition, and I have not. When I talk to him about what would happen to us all if he died, he says he isn’t dead yet; but that is not argument. You never know. Fell diseases come on people suddenly and accidents happen. Besides he is fifty-five, and how many years of work lie before a man when he is fifty-five? He is well insured and I have two hundred a year of my own, but if he died and none of the girls were married, there would be eight of us left; and eight people to house, feed and clothe on next to nothing becomes a problem. Nicholas has not been able to save much, because when you have seven children life is O.D.T.A.A. It begins with teething, goes on to measles, and continues with love affairs. None of our girls are married yet, but all except Sally are of a marriageable age. I needn’t count Nancy either, because she says she would rather be a great surgeon than a wife and mother. Anyhow she is in London and can mate there if heaven pleases. But Celia, Martha, Jane, and Hester are all at home and as far as I can see are likely to remain there.

We live at Porthlew in Cornwall, and Nicholas runs the China Clay Works for the Clevelands. He ought to have had a partnership years ago, but although Nicholas has brains and energy where his work is concerned he is wanting in push. At least I think so, but I never say much about it because it would hurt his feelings. Mr. Cleveland died two years ago leaving a large fortune, a flourishing business, a widow and an only son. The son is now nominally at the head of affairs but he depends entirely on Nicholas. He is not a fool, but he is young and inexperienced and unfortunately very much in his mother’s hands.

She wants him to marry Isabel Godolphin, and he wants to marry Celia, so it’s pull devil, pull baker, and none of us know yet what will happen. But I’m afraid Celia hasn’t a chance. Mrs. Cleveland is an overbearing woman with a glib tongue. She got her own way with her husband and I greatly fear that she will get it with her son. Bill Cleveland will marry Isabel Godolphin, and Celia will cry her eyes out.

I’ve tried to make my children truthful, polite, unselfish. It sounds too old-fashioned to write down, but in my opinion fashions change with the generations while the qualities we value in others do not. They have all been educated at the High School, because that was the best we could afford for them, and none of them have as many clothes or go to as many dances as they would like. As I have said, they are girls of average intelligence and, except Celia, not much above the average in looks. Nancy is not as handsome as her sisters, and perhaps that is why her thoughts turned to medicine at an early age. She has improved lately, but she is too much like her father to be pretty. She has a downright steady face with dark eyes, a mouth that pouts slightly when she is concentrating. In fact she is the image of Nicholas, and I love her for it. But compared with Celia, for instance, she is plain. I have heard Celia described as the prettiest girl in Porthlew, but she won’t be that long if she cries her eyes out for Bill Cleveland.

All sorts of things happened on our silver-wedding day, some pleasant and some not. I did not sleep much the night before, because the children had insisted on a party, and I had a great many little things to think about. We were not giving the party in our own house, but were having one or two old friends to dine with us after it, and I went down in the middle of the night to make sure that the larder door was shut. Because last week Alberta, our cook, left it open, and Toby our fox terrier got at the ham. Unfortunately I have the kind of mind that worries about problems of conduct one minute and a larder door the next, so I don’t get much rest. Nicholas never worries about anything. He sleeps all night and works or plays all day, and is even tempered whatever happens: which I am not. However, the larder door was shut. I felt at peace with every one except Mrs. Cleveland. I tried not to think of her and before long I fell asleep. At seven, the whole household, including Alberta, the cook, Melinda the parlour maid, and Toby the fox terrier, burst into our room, laughing, singing, barking, issuing orders, yelling congratulations, and dragging with them a long heavy package. Ambrose and Toby arrived first, Toby alighting plumb on my chest, and licking my face in a delirium. There are very few rules made and enforced in our house, but one is that nobody comes into our bedroom in the early morning except Melinda with hot water and tea. However, it was our silver-wedding day, and here were our young, all of them except Nancy, who had not been able to get leave. Ambrose, my only boy, has red hair and freckles. He is not like either of us, but Nicholas says he had an uncle on his mother’s side who was known as Carrots, and who went to sea and was drowned. So I am determined that Ambrose shall not go to sea. Sally is red-headed too, and has green eyes and absurd thin legs. She is a lonely child, because her sisters are all grown up, and Ambrose makes friends with boys. Besides, her five elder sisters all send her on errands and keep her in order. It is Sally this and Sally that from morning till night, unless I put my foot down and then I’m told that I spoil her.

They were unrolling the long package now and trying to unfold it, Melinda helping them. Toby had not quieted down yet, but was on the floor, yelping and biting at every one in turn, affectionately. I sat up and saw that what they had in hand was a carpet, a blue Indian carpet.

“Dad’s present to you!”

“Nancy chose it.”

“Lizzie, it’s posh.”

That was Hester. She always calls me Lizzie, although I always say I will not allow it. But Hester, though tiresome at times, has a way with her. I think she may marry, even if none of the others do.

Martha and Jane were both on their knees. Jane has the best eyes of the lot; starry and true. You love her when she looks at you. At least I do. But probably no one else ever will. Martha, my third girl, has the good looks of youth, and of her steady nature. I hope she won’t take to Good Works, at least not yet. They may be a consolation later on if nothing happens. But I have an idea about Martha that may develop before long.

“There!” said some of them, and stood about admiring.

“But the extravagance of it,” I cried, and I bundled them all out of the room for I wanted to thank Nicholas myself, and it was high time to dress.

“You know we can’t afford it,” I said to him.

“Mrs. Cleveland to see you,” said Melinda, putting her head round the corner, three hours later. “I’ve shut her up.”

“Shut her up!”

“In the drawing-room like you told me. The flowers are all dead, and I haven’t dusted there yet. She can write ’er name on the pianner.”

That kind of thing always happens when Mrs. Cleveland comes. With four grown-up daughters at home and two maids, dusty rooms and dead flowers ought to be impossible, but the girls had rushed off with flowers to the Winter Garden, where we were to be At Home, and I had been hindered by presents and telegrams, and was still in parley with Alberta whose mayonnaise could not be depended upon when she was excited.

“You mustn’t hurry it, Alberta,” I was saying, and as I spoke the kitchen door opened, and there stood Mrs. Cleveland. Quite impossible, you will say. In England, people don’t walk unasked into kitchens. She had been locked up in the drawing-room, and if she knew her manners must have stayed there. But Mrs. Cleveland has manners of her own, and sometimes they are bad.

“I thought perhaps you didn’t know I was here!” she said.

I could see her taking stock of the kitchen as she spoke and comparing it with her own. Mine is small and the worse for wear, and of course Alberta had two ragged, discoloured cloths hanging on a string stretched across the top of the range.

“But you have only just come,” I said, and I went with her back to the drawing-room, which looked dreadful. There was dust everywhere, and bowls of dead lilac, and on the hearth-rug a large haddock bone. The grate had not been done, the windows had not been opened, and Toby, after worrying an old bedroom shoe, had gone to sleep with it between his paws.

My house, though threadbare, is well run as a rule, but Alberta and Melinda were both so excited about our silver-wedding that they were off their heads, and the girls were nearly as bad. Melinda does the drawing-room every day before breakfast, but when I asked her what had happened this morning she said she had been all in an uproar over the carpet, and it had clean gone out of her head. I wished it had been clean, but as it was I had to bear with Mrs. Cleveland’s pitying little smile, and agree to her suggestion that we should walk round the garden. She had brought us a present of her own photograph in a silver frame, an embarrassing gift, because when Mrs. Cleveland is not there I try to forget her. She is the last person in the world I wish to have always with me. However, I thanked her politely, showed her some of the other presents we had received, led her into the garden, and when we had been round it, sat down with her in my favourite seat facing the sea. She had told me what to do with the various corners that might easily be improved, and broken it to me that she would not be able to stay long at our party that afternoon; she had asked after Nancy, and advised me how to educate Ambrose; she had pulled up several weeds and exhorted me to be stricter with Alberta and Melinda; in fact she had been insufferably officious and omniscient for nearly a quarter of an hour before she came to the real purport of her visit.

“It seems a pity to go away,” she said, “but I have made up my mind that I must have a change.”

“Are you going away?” I said, with my eyes fixed on a large dandelion in the path. Mrs. Cleveland’s eyes had been on it too, and she had just recommended me a Weed Killer.

“Oh! haven’t you heard,” she went on. “William and I are going round the world, and Isabel Godolphin is going with us.”

Unluckily, I’m so made that when a thing stares me in the face, I see it. Nicholas is different. If you were a trivial impertinent and stared at him for a week, he would never know you were there. So he is never ruffled, even by Mrs. Cleveland, who always spoke of her son as Bill to his equals, and as William to his inferiors. She had called him William to us lately, and I took it to mean that she did not wish him to marry Celia. I should not have been anxious for the marriage myself, if I had not known that Celia’s happiness depended on it. The idea of being closely connected with Mrs. Cleveland did not please me at all, and I’ve no wish to let any of my girls marry where they are not wanted.

“Going round the world takes a long time,” I said.

“I want to be away for a year, and forget that there is such a place as Porthlew. I get so tired of it and of every one in it, and so does William. It’s not good for a young man in his position to fix himself in a small provincial town. He gets ideas that he would shake off an hour after he started. Unsuitable ideas.”

What was I to say to that? I asked for the name and address of the Weed Killer.

CHAPTER II

The real difficulty about liars is that they are not always lying. You have to sort their statements yourself and decide which are true and which are not. I believe that Mrs. Cleveland had Bill well under her thumb and that she wanted him to marry Isabel Godolphin, but I wondered what Nicholas would say if the young man proposed to take a holiday for a whole year. I said nothing about it to the girls when they came back before lunch because I did not want to upset Celia. They all dislike Mrs. Cleveland and when they saw that she had brought us her photograph for a silver-wedding present they put it away in a cupboard. Luckily our world held a great many people besides Mrs. Cleveland, and during the afternoon when friends of all ages gathered round us at the Winter Garden, it was easy to forget her. The Clevelands and Nicholas are not Cornish, but I am. I was a Hendra and call cousins with most of the families round. That is why it is so absurd of Mrs. Cleveland to give herself airs with me and talk of Bill as William. She is a Londoner and therefore “foreign” in Porthlew and her father was on the Stock Exchange. Nicholas and Bill’s father were at Cambridge together and when Arthur Cleveland succeeded to the business he gave my husband a post in it and thereby did himself a good turn as well as his friend. The two men worked amiably together for twenty-eight years, but Mrs. Cleveland has never liked either Nicholas or me. Bill is the image of his father, a big athletic man with pleasant grey eyes and an easy temper. He was at Rugby and then at Cambridge and did well at games both at School and at the ’Varsity. He came into the business just before his father died, and Nicholas says he has sound brains. Perhaps he has. I never came across his brains, so I cannot judge of their quality. He is one of your silent men, who only opens his mouth when he has something to say, and he gives in to his mother too much to be called strong. I wish Celia had not lost her heart to him, because he will never have the grit to marry her, in spite of his mother. She has refused two good offers lately, and I know it is on his account. I should like to get her out of Porthlew for a time, and then she might forget him. But I have no money to spare to send her round the world.

At the Winter Garden the floor for dancing is railed off with a wooden railing, and all round the room between the railing and the wall there are little tea-tables. Upstairs there is a room with card tables for people who like bridge, and Nicholas had promised to form fours there for those who wished to play. But to keep a promise of that kind you must be on the spot and at five o’clock he had not arrived. On his silver-wedding day! when he was expected to be at my side from the beginning and help me to receive our guests. Every one was asking for him and wondering what had become of him, and of course I wondered and worried till I hardly knew what I was saying or doing. It was Celia who had the sense to telephone to the Works and ask what had happened, but the only answer she got was that Mr. Brooke was talking to “Mr. William” in the Private Office and did not wish to be disturbed. I knew what that meant at once. Bill was telling Nicholas that he meant to go away for a whole year and Nicholas was expostulating. It was too bad of both men, but they were both marionettes and could not help themselves. Mrs. Cleveland pulled the strings. Nicholas did not dance to her bidding as a rule and it galled me to think that she had lassoed him just to-day, but I could put no other interpretation on his absence.

The four girls all helped me to deal with the crowd now filling the room, and Celia sorted out the bridge-players and herded them upstairs. The band struck up a fox trot. The older folk found seats, the clatter of teacups behind the railing still went on, and George Vincent, who is our neighbour and one of our oldest friends, persuaded me to sit down with him and have tea. Poor fellow! He lost his wife a year ago and has three young children. He comes to me for advice about them and doesn’t take it. But I’m very fond of him, and I told him what was happening at the Works and why Nicholas had not arrived yet.

“A whole year, you know. My husband is to have the whole thing on his hands for a whole year. It’s preposterous.”

“I don’t believe it,” said George.

“You never believe anything,” I retorted, for only last week he had been obliged to get rid of the children’s nurse in the most embarrassing circumstances. If I had not been prompt about getting the doctor and an ambulance, the population of Porthlew would have been increased in his front hall, for the hussy sat there with her mother, the mother threatening to have the law on me because I said what I did say. We were thinking over this affair when Mrs. Cleveland and Isabel Godolphin came towards us, both evidently disgruntled.

“No host and hostess and not enough tea-tables,” Mrs. Cleveland was saying in a loud voice. “I wonder what has happened to Bill? I know he thought it was his duty to come. As a rule, wild horses won’t get him to an afternoon tea-party. But Mr. Brooke has served the firm for so many years. Oh! there you are, Mrs. Brooke. I didn’t see you when I arrived. What a crowd you have. The whole town. Have you seen William? He promised to come. I made a point of it. But you know what young men are. At least you will when your boy grows up. I suppose young women are more in your line now. Can you squeeze in there, Isabel? They don’t allow much room for chairs, do they? You’re sure you’ve quite finished? We don’t want to take your places. Isn’t it hot? I wish they’d open a few windows. But it won’t take us long to have tea and then we must fly.”

George Vincent and I had both got up while Mrs. Cleveland yapped and took our places; and as soon as we had seen that she was served we got away. Isabel had greeted me as usual with artificial effusion and had no doubt recognised my frock, which I had worn two or three times in the early spring. There is no harm in Isabel, but she puts on too much colour and her chin is too long. It will meet her nose when she is a little older. But she is an only child and will come into a considerable property, so it is only natural that a woman of Mrs. Cleveland’s moral and mental calibre should choose her for a daughter-in-law. I sometimes think that I shall be glad when the marriage is an accomplished fact. At present I can hardly think of my other children because I am so concerned about Celia. The uncertainty is wearing her down.

We had asked about two hundred people to our party, and I suppose a hundred and fifty must have come. The band was now playing and a great many were dancing. The little tea-tables were still occupied and I took up my post near the entrance again to receive a few late comers. I saw that Sally was prancing about with a boy of her own age, Ambrose was eating ices, and Martha was dancing with George Vincent. A very plain red-haired young man I did not know was looking at Jane as young men often do look at her and Hester was upstairs playing bridge. Celia told me so and then she stood beside me for a time.

“What can they be talking about?” she said in my ear. “Have you any idea?”

“Yes, I have an idea,” I whispered back.

“Tell me.”

I had to make up my mind quickly and perhaps I made it up wrong. I told her what Mrs. Cleveland had said that morning about going round the world with Bill and taking Isabel with them. Celia had been looking pale enough lately, but she turned quite white as I told her and it wrung my heart. That is the worst of having children. Their sorrows are yours and you wish you could slay the people bringing them trouble. Love affairs are light affairs with some natures, but not with all. Celia was hungering for Bill’s affection as a starving man hungers for food, and if she did not get it her beauty would wither and her youth would die. I longed to take her in my arms and hold her to me, but we had to stand there and behave ourselves. And presently Mrs. Cleveland with Isabel came forth from the tea-tables and began yapping again.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Brooke. Such a successful party. Everybody one knows and doesn’t know. We must fly, because we have promised to go on to the St. Justs and we want to pick up Bill as he is not here. Good-bye, Celia. How tired you look. I suppose you’ve had a great deal to do. But you’re nearly at the end of it, or are you having people to dinner too? You can’t have room for many besides yourselves. I think Sally’s legs are thinner than ever. Poor Sally! What is it the farmers call the little pig that is born last and is smaller than the rest of the litter? You should try Ovaltine. Good-bye!”

At last, soon after Mrs. Cleveland’s departure, Nicholas appeared, and Bill came with him, one elderly, one young, one short and broad, one big boned and tall, both dependable men, and neither of them talkative. Any one could see at a glance that Nicholas was pleased about something. At least I could, and I wondered what it was. He had no business to be pleased with himself, considering that he was an hour and a half late at his own party, and I expected him to show a contrite spirit when he saw me. But he did nothing of the kind. His eyes were twinkling, and before he could reach me he was mobbed; literally mobbed by his children and his friends, reproaching him, congratulating him, asking him what he meant by it, offering him tea, inviting him to dance, and making ridiculous guesses at what had delayed him. For Nicholas is one of those people nearly every one trusts and likes, although he has no showy qualities at all. He is not handsome or brilliant, but in love and friendship he wears well. I have never known him to lose a friend or fail one, or lose his head in a difficulty, or take a wrong turning when the way was doubtful. In his judgments he can be charitable and he can be severe. He hardly ever speaks of his neighbours at all, but I know which of them please him and which do not. He won’t have anything to do with a liar if he can help it, but when he can’t help it he doesn’t lose his temper. He listens to Mrs. Cleveland as if he was believing her and never lets her know that he does not. But she has never liked him because he has never ko-towed to her. Arthur Cleveland, Bill’s father, was too much dominated by his wife, but though I’ve known Bill since he was born I don’t understand him. I’m fond of him though, and I wish he would be man enough to defy his mother and marry Celia. He came straight up to me when he arrived with Nicholas and mumbled some sort of congratulation. Then he spoke to Celia, and I thought he would ask her to dance or go off with her to get tea at one of the little tables. But he did neither. He stood about close to me and said he hoped I should be pleased.

“I’m not pleased at all,” I said, “I’m very much annoyed. Nicholas promised to be here at four o’clock. What delayed him?”

“I’m afraid I did.”

“But you knew we were giving a party.”

“I forgot it.”

“Then Nicholas ought to have reminded you.”

“I believe he did! But we both got so interested. . . .”

“Interested! What business had Nicholas to be interested? Do you mean to say that it was nothing urgent?”

“Not really urgent. We might have had the talk to-morrow. I suppose you know that I am going round the world with my mother?”

“It’s true, then! Was that what you were talking about?”

“Yes. We were making arrangements. Your husband must tell you about it.”

“How long are you going to be away?” said Celia, who stood close to us.

“About a year. It soon passes.”

“I suppose it does when you are moving about,” said Celia.

“Come and dance,” said Bill, and the two young people went off together, leaving me troubled and indignant.

CHAPTER III

The next thing that happened was a complete surprise to Nicholas and me. A hush fell on the room, every one crowded towards one end of it. We found ourselves the objects of general attention. My cousin Captain Hendra made a little congratulatory speech in which he was kind to our virtues and blind to our faults, and as if by a conjuring trick, a magnificent silver tray and tea-set appeared, a present to us from a large number of our friends. Nicholas had to make a speech too, and he did it very well, but didn’t say why he was looking pleased or what he and Bill had been talking about. I didn’t get that out of him till we were changing for dinner at home, and then we were both too hurried and flurried to talk reasonably.

“Why were you so late, Nicholas? You promised to come early and help me.”

“I know I did. What have you done with my clothes brush?”

“I haven’t done anything with it. Do tell me what you and Bill were talking about. His going away for a year, I suppose, and leaving you all the work to do. His mother said it was to be a year. Why can’t he do his courting at home and stick to his job?”

“I wish I could find my clothes brush. Sorry.”

The apology was because he had nearly upset me, as he dashed across the room to get at my dressing-table and my brush. Dinner was ordered for eight and it was now a quarter past. Our two guests, Doctor Little, and George Vincent, had come, and when I recovered my balance I looked out of our window to see a car stop at our door and Bill Cleveland descend from it. As I looked I was trying to put on one of those dresses that you have to worm your way into with outstretched arms. We were both feeling nightmarish.

“Bill has just arrived!” I exclaimed.

“I asked him,” said Nicholas.

“You asked him! at the last moment when the table is laid for ten and won’t hold eleven.”

“It will at a pinch. Sally can sit at one end with me.”

“Sally ought to be in bed. You ought never to have let her sit up. Did you tell Melinda? Wasn’t she put out? Luckily I’ve ordered enough of everything. But how inconsiderate of you, Nicholas. Yes, you do want a brush. Here, let me.”

“It was after we settled about the partnership.”

“What partnership?”

“Mine of course. Bill has offered me a partnership.”

“That’s why you were looking so pleased!”

“I am pleased. So are you, I hope.”

“Yes, I’m pleased,” I said.

“Your voice sounds like flat champagne. What’s the matter?”

“I’m thinking of Celia.”

There was no time to think of anything just then, or to say anything more. Sally dashed into the room to say every one was waiting for us, and that Alberta said it wasn’t her fault if the soup was cold, and that the cheese straws had gone to crumbs because I’d given her the wrong prescription, and that there were only ten champagne glasses and what was Melinda to do about it; and then, standing on one leg, as is Sally’s way when excited, her green eyes as impish as a kitten’s, she whispered:

“Melinda’s handing in her notice to-morrow. I heard her say so to Alberta. It’s because of the new tea-service.”

“What were you doing in the kitchen, Sally? You are not allowed there.”

“I am when I’m sent. Celia sent me.”

“What for?”

“When Bill came. I was to tell Melinda to lay for him. She’s foaming.”

“But what has the new tea-service to do with it?” asked Nicholas, who is as incapable as other men of putting two and two together.

“She doesn’t want to clean it,” I explained.

“That’s right,” said Sally. “She says she’d rather die in a ditch than do it.”

“You are not to say ‘that’s right,’ Sally, I’ve told you so before; and you are not to repeat what you hear in the kitchen.”

“But it’s so interesting,” said Sally. Truly it was interesting to hear of Melinda’s intentions, and unpleasant. However, I never allow myself to be much upset by my servants, and although we are a large family I rarely change them. I’ve brought up my girls to be handy about the house, and if there is an interregnum in the kitchen, we five able-bodied women fill it. I had already decided in my own mind that Melinda should not touch the new silver, both because it would have been unreasonable to expect it, and because I did not want it scratched.

But I had more important things than Melinda and the tea-service in my mind as I hurried downstairs. Nicholas had his partnership. Bill was going round the world with Isabel Godolphin and his mother. These two events clashed within me so that I felt Himmel-hoch jauchzend, zum Tode betrübt. Goethe says people in love are like that, happy in heaven one minute and miserably on earth the next. But he doesn’t tell us what happens to those who are in both extremes at the same time. I had the dinner to think of too, and the cheese straws that were not straws, but crumbs, and Sally, who took a chicken bone in her fingers and gnawed it with her eyes on me. Celia ought to have stopped her, but Celia was talking to Bill at the time. I was glad she had put on the dress she had worn at Rose Trelawney’s wedding, because she looks lovely in it. She has rather short, well-cut features, beautiful grey eyes and thick wavy hair. She is slender and graceful, and I believe that if she wrapped an old sack round her shoulders, other women would wear old sacks too. For she always seems to be well turned out. She has an elegance of mind and person that are rare, and in my opinion she is too good for Bill Cleveland. I should like her to marry a man who had a great career before him, but they are not plentiful anywhere, and I know of none in Porthlew. Besides, what you really want most for your children is happiness, and that is not dependent on careers. Nicholas says that we are a happy household, or that we should be if I worried less. But how can I help worrying when I am responsible for the welfare of so many people. The mayonnaise was a success, for a wonder, but the bread-sauce was too thin, and though Nicholas is the kindest man in the world, he asks those exasperating questions that men do ask when cooks go wrong. In a sudden lull in the conversation he beamed at me from the other end of the table and said:

“Why is the bread-sauce so thin?”

“I know,” piped Sally, her eyes full of mischief. “Alberta burnt the first lot and had to make this in a hurry, and there’s none too much bread in the house.”

Then all those grown-up people, who ought to have known better laughed at her; so I went on talking to George Vincent about the eclipse which was to happen in June, and which he wanted to see. He said he would like to go north for it, and did I think he could safely leave the children?

I asked him if he had no elderly relative who could take charge in his absence, and he said he had several but that, unfortunately, he didn’t like them. I couldn’t tell him that his troubles would be over if he married Martha, who sat beside him and who is as fond of his children as if they were her own, so I said vaguely that some of us would keep an eye on his nursery if he went away, and that if Sally ate all the trifle she had heaped on her plate she would be ill. I could not help being rather distracted, because when Sally sits next to Nicholas she knows she can do as she likes. He never seems to mind how naughty she is, or how ill she makes herself, and you can imagine what my feelings were when George began about the eclipse again, and I saw that little devil put both hands into the dish of cheese straws and scoop them full of crumbs. She didn’t even put them on her plate but began to eat them out of her hands. And then, what must Hester do but follow her little sister’s example. As if it were a game. In a way it was Alberta’s fault. The cheese straws were nothing but a mound of crumbs, that could only be managed with spoons. I refused them, and so did George and Martha. But the others ate them as Sally did and said they were excellent. I suppose the champagne had gone to their heads. After dinner we played bridge and Sally went to bed. But Ambrose had to take a hand because there were only seven of us without him. Bill and Celia said the night was too fine to stay indoors, and they strolled about the garden. When they came in Bill said they had been killing slugs. I thought he seemed better pleased with himself than he had any right to be, so I asked him when he was going to start on his journey round the world and whether we should be able to get him back in a hurry in case of need.

“Nicholas isn’t a young man,” I said. “He might break down under the strain.”

“Do you mean the strain of doing without me?” he asked, looking still more pleased with himself, and as Nicholas came up just then he told him what I had said. They both looked pleased with themselves then, and that annoyed me.

“You’ll have double work for a year,” I said, but he only laughed.

“We’ve talked over all that,” he said, looking affectionately at Bill, and then we rearranged the bridge tables while Ambrose went to bed, and I went into the dining-room to have a look round. For Alberta and Melinda are only young themselves, and they had had a long heavy day. I found them with several of their friends and relations looking admiringly at the presentation plate, which was on the sideboard. Everything to do with dinner had been cleared and put away already, and I had no doubt that some of the girls with them had given a helping hand. They melted away, however, when I appeared, leaving Melinda behind, and I wondered whether they all knew that she was going to hand in her notice, and whether she would do it to-night.

“About this here silver,” she began at once, to my surprise; for as a rule I find that threats in the kitchen are not carried out in the dining-room.

“It’s handsome,” I said.

“Brae and handsome. Fit for the king’s palace, I should say. It’ll want covers. Covers of that green stuff like you keep round the best candlesticks.”

“I don’t think so, Melinda. We shall use it every day.”

“Every day. Clean all that every day, just for a cup o’ warm at four o’clock. I couldn’t do it, Mrs. Brooke, not with everything else I got to do.”

“I shouldn’t expect it, Melinda.”

She looked rather taken aback when I said that and suspicious.

“It’ll want cleaning,” she said. “I couldn’t take in silver as was spotty. I can’t abide it.”

“It won’t be spotty. We shall see to it ourselves.”

“What for?”

“To save you the extra work.”

“I never bin afraid of work.”

“Never. You’re a good worker.”

“S’pose you think I’ll scratch it?”

“It mustn’t be scratched.”

“Nor it will be. Miss Hester, she did that scratch on the old teapot. She knows she did. I’m very careful.”

“Yes, I know you are, Melinda. You hardly ever break anything. But you have a good deal to do.”

“No such thing. Not after tea I haven’t. I’ll give it a lick every day after tea, and put it away in them green covers. That’s what my uncle does with ’is silver, and ’e’s been butler at Lidcot for forty years. ’E ought to know, and if I told ’im the young ladies cleaned my silver ’e’d foam at me.”

“Well, Melinda,” I began, but I was not allowed to go on.

“I’ll take the measure for them green covers to-morrow, and I’ll make ’em myself on my machine, because I know eggsackly how they ought to be made. I’ll keep ’em in my pantry like my uncle does his. He taught me how to clean silver. That’s why ours looks so nice. It’s a lot o’ trouble, but if I wasn’t doing that e’d be doing something else I s’pose. I can’t sit idle. It worrets me.”

CHAPTER IV

Alberta and Melinda both came from comfortable homes and I had known them all their lives. Their fathers were farmers on my cousin, Tim Hendra’s land and Alberta’s people milked thirty cows. Whenever I saw Alberta’s mother she reminded me that there was no need for any of her children to go out at all as there was work enough and to spare at home, but Alberta was no good at farm work and liked being with us, so they let her stay. Melinda belonged to a large family, too, and had spent her childhood in a tumbledown place on the edge of a cliff, looking through mists at the winter storms and hearing the sea foaming and roaring below. The wilder the day the more beautiful it was if you had eyes to see. But Melinda hated the mud in the lanes and the farm work and the long, dark evenings. In Porthlew, there were pavements, lights, shop-windows, crowds of people and the Pictures.

Both girls had come to me five years ago, soon after they left school, and they belonged to the family, but I had never been able to teach them the formalities of behaviour enforced in more orthodox households, and whenever Nicholas’s Aunt Bethia stayed with us my eyes were opened to their deficiencies. All the year round we rubbed along very comfortably, but directly Aunt Bethia announced her annual visit I knew that comfort was not enough. In every self-respecting household there should be a certain frigid polish that the old lady found wanting in ours, and, I fear, missed. I tried to apply a little when she was due, but without success. It would have been easier if she had not brought her maid, Weaver, with her, because Weaver, who ought to have known better, “passed remarks.”