Chapter Twelve.A Family Council.That night after dinner Jack broke the news of his disappointment to the assembled family, who bore the shock with surprising resignation. Pat whistled, and said, “Just our luck! Ah, well, if it’s no better, let’s be thankful it’s no worse!” Miles suggested cheerfully, “Why don’t you chuck it and keep a shop? Then we should get all our food for nothing.” And Bridgie’s sigh turned into a smile as she cried, “What a blessing we took this house when we did! Now we should not have been able to afford it, and we should never have known you, Sylvia dear! It’s funny, isn’t it, to think that this little crib is too big for us?”“Oh, awfully funny!” said Jack drily. He had opened the topmost drawer in the writing-table and taken out half a dozen red-backed books and a bundle of bills. “The fact remains that we shall have to spend at least a hundred a year less than we calculated if we want to keep out of the Bankruptcy Court. I don’t know how it is, but I seem to have given the money for half these bills, and yet here they are again! I was perfectly horrified to see them. This coal bill, for instance,—I remember distinctly giving you two sovereigns one morning just as I was starting for town—”Sylvia sat up hastily and fumbled for the stick by which she supported herself about the house. It seemed to her impossible that such intimate family affairs could be discussed before a stranger, but at the first movement Jack inquired eagerly where she was going, and both he and Bridgie laughed to scorn the idea of privacy. The presence of a stranger seemed indeed to whet their interest in the forthcoming discussion, which was conducted throughout with a cheerfulness and composure which contrasted strangely with Miss Munns’s weekly lamentations over her tradesmen’s accounts.“’Deed, I remember quite well!” said Bridgie, referring to the money which had been given to her in settlement of the coal bill. “It was the morning the cat got lost in the oven, and all of us searching the house over because of the piteous mews of it. It crept in, Sylvia, when the door was open, after the bacon came out, and Sarah pushed it to as she passed, so the poor creature had a fine Turkish bath of it before we found her. Did I not pay the bill, after all? I suppose I was short of money for something else. It’s wonderful the way it slips away when you are keeping house!”Jack sighed and took up another paper from the table.“There’s another here. I know I gave you ten shillings to settle this ironmonger fellow. Eight and threepence! It’s ridiculous running on bills for little sums like this.”“I paid it! I paid it!” cried Bridgie triumphantly. “I distinctly remember, because there is such a funny little man in the shop who says, ‘What is your next pleasure, madam?’ when you buy a box of tacks. I remember distinctly going in and paying something.”“Very well, then, you must have the receipt. Where have you put the receipt?”Bridgie looked vaguely round the room, turned out the contents of her writing-pad, peeped into a drawer under the table, searched the bottom of the stocking-basket, the pocket of her dress, then stroked her chin meditatively, and said—“Perhaps I was paying for something else! I remember now that Ididbuy a saucepan.”Jack sighed again, and paced up and down the floor, but he showed no signs of anger or even surprise, and his voice was quite apologetic as he said—“I’m afraid you will have to be more methodical, dear, if we stay on in this house. We shall never know how we stand if bills keep coming in when we think they are settled. We had better hold a cabinet council and decide how much we can afford to spend in housekeeping and other departments, and cut our coat according to our cloth. It will be difficult after the way things went on at Knock, but it’s our only chance. I tried to put down my private expenses this afternoon, and was horrified to find how heavy they were.”Bridgie cast an admiring glance upon him, and turned to Sylvia with an air of pride.“Isn’t he splendid, now, at his age, talking like an old man for wisdom and prudence! You may well say things are different from what they were at home, for there, if the worst came to the worst, you could always fall back on the pigs and the vegetables that grew for nothing at your door. The idea of paying fourpence for a cauliflower takes me heart out of me every time I go marketing, and the bacon is no sooner bought, than it is eaten. Well, I’m willing enough to learn method, but who’s to teach me? Saving your presence, Jack, you’re just a beginner yourself!”Sylvia chuckled mischievously, and her eyes danced with amusement.“There is a mistress in the art at your very door! Aunt Margaret would be enchanted to instruct you, and her housekeeping is a marvel of accuracy. She could tell you exactly how much she spent last year on soft soap, and the reason why it was more in ninety-six than in ninety-seven. She could walk about the house in the dark and put her hand on the blue-bag and the list of last week’s washing. She makes lists of everything she possesses, from household linen to the Christmas cards which she sends out and receives. Her dresses last for best for four years before they are turned for afternoon wear, and two years later they are re-dipped for mornings. They have histories, like her relations, and make valuable Christmas presents to the charwoman on their eighth birthday. She thinks I am recklessly extravagant because my dresses are worn-out in a year!”“I’ll ask her to teach me at once! I’ll begin making lists this very afternoon! I’ll practise shutting my eyes and searching for the blue-bag,” cried Bridgie ardently. “Jack dear, I’ll be a model housekeeper, and save so much money that we shall be quite rich.”She was all smiles and complaisance, and sat down for the cabinet council with an unruffled brow, but, as we all know, it is more difficult to face one or two definite difficulties than an army of shadowy deprivations, and when the division of the family income made it necessary to subtract considerably from her housekeeping allowance, and to saddle her in addition with several outside expenses, Mistress Bridget sighed and showed signs of rebellion.“Such a lot of trouble for such a trifling saving! ’Twill destroy me altogether to be fussing over every halfpenny. What would it matter if we were a trifle in debt at the end of the year? Geoffrey would pay a hundred pounds without knowing it, and be proud to do it into the bargain!”“But I won’t accept it. He has done quite enough as it is. He has paid for Pat’s training, and will give him the agency as soon as he is ready to take it, and he paid for Pixie’s lessons in Paris. I could not refuse what was good for them, but I’ll keep my own house, or give it up altogether!” said Jack proudly, and Sylvia nodded her head in emphatic approval from her place of vantage on the sofa.Pat and Miles also applauded the declaration of independence, and accepted their own share in the contemplated economies with unperturbed serenity, while Pixie sat solemnly in a corner, turning her eyes on the face of each speaker in turns, her shoulders heaving with suppressed emotion. Of all the members of the family it was evident that she took the present difficulty most seriously, and Sylvia was strengthened in the conviction that she had heard and taken to heart the reference to herself which had been made in the afternoon.She made no reference to the subject, but three times over the next day Sylvia entered a room in time to hear a hurried rustle and scramble, and behold Pixie gazing into the fire with an air of elaborate unconsciousness—the newspaper rolled into a ball beneath her chair. It was always open at the advertisement sheet, moreover, so that the onlooker had not much difficulty in guessing the character of the letters which were inscribed with such deep-breathed earnestness in the afternoon.They were posted in the pillar-box at the corner of the road, and Pixie marched back to the house and sat herself down with an air of mysterious importance. Her head was held proudly erect, her lips pressed tightly together as if nothing, no nothing, would induce her to put her secret into words, and Sylvia smiled to herself, and from the experiences of a week’s acquaintance, gave her exactly five minutes in which to divulge the whole story.“If you were threatened with a danger—a hidjus danger—what should you think would be the best way to avoid it?” asked Pixie earnestly, at the expiration of two minutes and a half.Sarah had that moment brought in the lamp and brushed up the fire, and the little room looked wonderfully cheerful and cosy. It was just the time and opportunity for a confidential chat, and Sylvia sat herself down in the arm-chair with a pleasant sense of expectancy. She was allowed to sit up for an hour or two in the day, and that in itself was a cheering circumstance.“If I were threatened with a danger, how should I try to avoid it? I really don’t know, Pixie. What do you advise yourself?” she asked smilingly, and Pixie smote her fists together, and stamped on the floor with dramatic emphasis.“Ye ought to march straight out and meet it! That’s what Thérèse has been teaching me all these years, for, says she, ‘Bridgie, the dear, is so soft-hearted that she’ll never believe but that everything will come right if ye sit still and look pleasant.’ The last thing but one that she said to me before parting was that I must look after the family and keep them out of trouble; so I’ve been reading over the papers to see how I can make some money, and it’s wonderful the choice you can have! I thought at first about taking a situation, but it’s better that I should stay at home to look after Bridgie, and teach her how to use up the scraps as they do in France. Me dear, the most elegant soup made out of nothing at all but the scraps ye would throw to the hens! There’s one advertisement which says a lady like meself can earn a handsome income in her own home, without interfering with present duties. It sounds so light and pleasant that it quite struck my fancy; and only two shillings for samples and directions!”“Oh, Pixie, did you really send it? I’m so sorry you did that without telling me first. I’m afraid it’s a hoax, dear! It sounds too good to be true!”“But it says so plainly in those very words. I’ll show it to you if you like. It’s printed!” cried Pixie in a tone of shocked reproof which silenced the protests on Sylvia’s lips. If her suspicions were correct, time would teach the lesson that even printed advertisements were not always accurately truthful, but she had not the heart to dilate on the perfidiousness of mankind in the presence of such innocent trustfulness. She murmured apologetic phrases, and Pixie beamed once more and continued her story.“There’s another gentleman wants you to go round and sell books. I’ve written to him, but I’d rather do things at home. Did you ever hear of anyone making a fortune by addressing envelopes? They want someone to do that too, but I write so slowly meself, and it’s only a shilling a thousand. A literery lady is wanted to correct proofs. That would be nice, because they might be stories. How do you spell ‘literery’, Sylvia?”“L-i-t-e-r-a-r-y!”“Not ‘e-r-y?’ You are quite sure?”“Absolutely sure!”“I put ‘literery’!” said Pixie, with a sigh. Perhaps it will prejudice him against me! Spelling was never my strong point, but that was worse than ignorance—with the paper lying beside me for reference! The best of all is a shop that wants you to colour photographs. I love painting pictures, and the scrap-books I’ve done for hospitals would fill a museum. Of course, these would have to be done carefully, but I’ve seen Thérèse sketching at Versailles, and artists painting in the Louvre, and I’m quick at imitating. They wanted three shillings to sell you the paints and brushes, and it will be cheap if it brings in pounds a week. “Twas a good thing Esmeralda gave me a sovereign before she left, and I could get the stamps without anyone being the wiser. I thought, you see, it would be so nice to keep it a secret until I could go to Bridgie with my earnings in my hand. You will promise truly and faithfully not to tell?”“If you will promise not to send any more money without asking my advice. I think you ought to do that, Pixie!”“I shan’t need to, me dear. I’ll earn enough as it is. Will I get the replies to-morrow, do you think? The letters ought to be delivered to-night!”Sylvia felt doubtful whether answers would ever be received, but as events proved, she was wrong, and Pixie was right, for her inquiries were answered by return of post, and on the first opportunity handed over for inspection. The philanthropist who provided remunerative work for gentlewomen at their own homes without interfering with present duties, forwarded samples as promised, the which Pixie spread out on the table with an air of depression. They consisted of a two-inch length of a simple stamping-off pattern, a fragment of black net, and a few dozen common jet beads, wrapped in a paper.“You iron off the pattern on the net, and then you sew round it with the beads, and then ye cut off the scallops, and then it’s jetted lace!” she explained anxiously. “And when it’s jetted lace, ye go out and sell it to the shops.” She sighed deeply, and turned over the patterns with her fingers. “How much a yard is jetted lace, Sylvia?”“I don’t know exactly, but I should think a narrow width like this could not be over a couple of shillings at the most.”“And it would take me months to do, and be puckered at that! It’s such wobbly stuff to sew. Even if I did a lot, I’m afraid the shops would never buy it.”“I’m afraid not, Pixie. I wouldn’t waste your time trying, dear!”Pixie sighed again and carefully replaced the fragments in their envelopes.“It was very kind of them to send them so soon, and if I was clever with my fingers, it would be a fine idea, but I know quite well it would be puckered. Will I send back the patterns, do you think? They might be useful for someone else.”“I think whoever sent them can very well afford to send another selection to the next inquirer. I should not dream of wasting a stamp on them,” replied Sylvia drily, and as she spoke she pulled Pixie nearer to her, and kissed her with a fervour which was somewhat startling to the recipient.“Are ye sorry for me?” she queried. “Ye needn’t be, because I shall have so much to do with the photographs that I am not disappointed a bit. They have sent me one to paint, and if I do it to their satisfaction they can keep me in constant work. They don’t say anything about paying, but I expect that will be settled next week. Here’s the paints, and here’s the lady!”Sylvia looked, and beheld half a dozen cheap paints such as are found in a child’s sixpenny box, a thick and a thin brush, equally common, and a photograph of a buxom lady with a mop of tousled hair, swinging in a hammock-chair under some trees, while a flight of marble steps led up to a palatial mansion in the background. She read the letter, and found that Pixie had accurately described its contents. It appeared that the firm was in pressing need of outside help, and had practically unlimited work to bestow upon ladies “with artistic tendencies.”Judging from the note-paper, the handwriting, and the style of the photograph itself, the critics could not be very severe, and for a moment Sylvia found herself wondering if by chance Pixie had indeed found some work within her scope. She herself knew little about painting, but after a long discussion of the different features of the photograph, she succeeded in dissuading the youthful artist from a somewhat violent scheme of colour, and in extracting a promise that the completed picture should be brought across the road for her inspection before it was despatched, for by this time Miss Munns was once more settled at home, and the last evening of the happy visit had arrived.Sylvia tried not to allow herself to think how quiet and dull the days would seem with only Aunt Margaret as a companion; how hard it would be to sit contentedly playing cribbage in the evenings, while across the road, within a stone’s-throw from the window, was this dear, bright, homey room, full of young creatures like herself. She told herself that she had had a happy holiday, and ought to go home refreshed and cheered. She made noble resolutions to be more patient and considerate, and pretended that she was really quite relieved to be leaving Jack O’Shaughnessy, for it was far more difficult to withstand the humbugging eyes now that she knew what a dear kind fellow he was at heart, and he on his part seemed quite embarrassingly sorry to say good-bye!“You have not been half so nice to me lately as you were the first few days,” he said plaintively in the privacy afforded by the strains of a comb orchestra vigorously conducted at the end of the room. “I must have offended you without meaning it; clumsy fellow that I am!”“Oh dear no, not at all. It is only that I am getting better, and my natural bad temper is asserting itself. Most people are mild when they are ill,” she replied lightly, but Jack was not so easily silenced.“That’s not the reason. Saving your presence, you are better tempered, not worse, but there’s a difference all the same. I suppose you don’t like me so well now that you know me better?”“On the contrary, I like you infinitely more.” Sylvia hesitated a moment, then added with sudden resolution, “I thought you were a very agreeable flirt; you amused me, and I enjoyed being flattered; but now I think you are a real good friend, and I treat you in a different way. One gets tired of compliments, but friendship grows better and better all the time.”Jack coloured, and was silent. Sylvia wondered if he were offended by the plainness of her words, but when he turned to her again, there was the frank, manly expression in his eyes which she liked most to see.“May I come and call upon you sometimes in the evening? I shall have no chance of seeing you in the daytime.”“I should like it very much, but it is not my house, remember, and Aunt Margaret is not fond of young men.”“But I am terribly partial to old ladies, and I never met the one yet that wasn’t wrapped up in me before we parted. I’ve got a way with old ladies!” said Jack complacently. “There was an old dear in Ireland who managed everyone for miles around, but she was as soft as putty in my hands. The poor girl, her daughter, was not allowed to join in any of the fun that was on hand, and when there was anything special coming on, she’d write pitiful letters and ask me to lunch. I always went—she had very good eyes of her own!—and she’d meet me in the drive, and put me up to what she wanted. By the time the old lady had told me all about her hens, and her servants, and her latest quarrel with her neighbours, and I’d flattered her by saying her rheumatism was the pick of any in the county, she’d be ready to eat out of my hand. And I’d fix up to call for Mollie, and see her safely home after the show was over.”“Mollie? A pretty name! Is it common in Ireland?”“It is so. We knew a stack of them at Knock, but Mollie Burrell was the best of the bundle.”Sylvia smiled, but her lips felt stiff, and the effort was not a success. A little weight of depression settled over her spirits. She felt anything but sympathetic for the deprivations of Miss Mollie Burrell.
That night after dinner Jack broke the news of his disappointment to the assembled family, who bore the shock with surprising resignation. Pat whistled, and said, “Just our luck! Ah, well, if it’s no better, let’s be thankful it’s no worse!” Miles suggested cheerfully, “Why don’t you chuck it and keep a shop? Then we should get all our food for nothing.” And Bridgie’s sigh turned into a smile as she cried, “What a blessing we took this house when we did! Now we should not have been able to afford it, and we should never have known you, Sylvia dear! It’s funny, isn’t it, to think that this little crib is too big for us?”
“Oh, awfully funny!” said Jack drily. He had opened the topmost drawer in the writing-table and taken out half a dozen red-backed books and a bundle of bills. “The fact remains that we shall have to spend at least a hundred a year less than we calculated if we want to keep out of the Bankruptcy Court. I don’t know how it is, but I seem to have given the money for half these bills, and yet here they are again! I was perfectly horrified to see them. This coal bill, for instance,—I remember distinctly giving you two sovereigns one morning just as I was starting for town—”
Sylvia sat up hastily and fumbled for the stick by which she supported herself about the house. It seemed to her impossible that such intimate family affairs could be discussed before a stranger, but at the first movement Jack inquired eagerly where she was going, and both he and Bridgie laughed to scorn the idea of privacy. The presence of a stranger seemed indeed to whet their interest in the forthcoming discussion, which was conducted throughout with a cheerfulness and composure which contrasted strangely with Miss Munns’s weekly lamentations over her tradesmen’s accounts.
“’Deed, I remember quite well!” said Bridgie, referring to the money which had been given to her in settlement of the coal bill. “It was the morning the cat got lost in the oven, and all of us searching the house over because of the piteous mews of it. It crept in, Sylvia, when the door was open, after the bacon came out, and Sarah pushed it to as she passed, so the poor creature had a fine Turkish bath of it before we found her. Did I not pay the bill, after all? I suppose I was short of money for something else. It’s wonderful the way it slips away when you are keeping house!”
Jack sighed and took up another paper from the table.
“There’s another here. I know I gave you ten shillings to settle this ironmonger fellow. Eight and threepence! It’s ridiculous running on bills for little sums like this.”
“I paid it! I paid it!” cried Bridgie triumphantly. “I distinctly remember, because there is such a funny little man in the shop who says, ‘What is your next pleasure, madam?’ when you buy a box of tacks. I remember distinctly going in and paying something.”
“Very well, then, you must have the receipt. Where have you put the receipt?”
Bridgie looked vaguely round the room, turned out the contents of her writing-pad, peeped into a drawer under the table, searched the bottom of the stocking-basket, the pocket of her dress, then stroked her chin meditatively, and said—
“Perhaps I was paying for something else! I remember now that Ididbuy a saucepan.”
Jack sighed again, and paced up and down the floor, but he showed no signs of anger or even surprise, and his voice was quite apologetic as he said—
“I’m afraid you will have to be more methodical, dear, if we stay on in this house. We shall never know how we stand if bills keep coming in when we think they are settled. We had better hold a cabinet council and decide how much we can afford to spend in housekeeping and other departments, and cut our coat according to our cloth. It will be difficult after the way things went on at Knock, but it’s our only chance. I tried to put down my private expenses this afternoon, and was horrified to find how heavy they were.”
Bridgie cast an admiring glance upon him, and turned to Sylvia with an air of pride.
“Isn’t he splendid, now, at his age, talking like an old man for wisdom and prudence! You may well say things are different from what they were at home, for there, if the worst came to the worst, you could always fall back on the pigs and the vegetables that grew for nothing at your door. The idea of paying fourpence for a cauliflower takes me heart out of me every time I go marketing, and the bacon is no sooner bought, than it is eaten. Well, I’m willing enough to learn method, but who’s to teach me? Saving your presence, Jack, you’re just a beginner yourself!”
Sylvia chuckled mischievously, and her eyes danced with amusement.
“There is a mistress in the art at your very door! Aunt Margaret would be enchanted to instruct you, and her housekeeping is a marvel of accuracy. She could tell you exactly how much she spent last year on soft soap, and the reason why it was more in ninety-six than in ninety-seven. She could walk about the house in the dark and put her hand on the blue-bag and the list of last week’s washing. She makes lists of everything she possesses, from household linen to the Christmas cards which she sends out and receives. Her dresses last for best for four years before they are turned for afternoon wear, and two years later they are re-dipped for mornings. They have histories, like her relations, and make valuable Christmas presents to the charwoman on their eighth birthday. She thinks I am recklessly extravagant because my dresses are worn-out in a year!”
“I’ll ask her to teach me at once! I’ll begin making lists this very afternoon! I’ll practise shutting my eyes and searching for the blue-bag,” cried Bridgie ardently. “Jack dear, I’ll be a model housekeeper, and save so much money that we shall be quite rich.”
She was all smiles and complaisance, and sat down for the cabinet council with an unruffled brow, but, as we all know, it is more difficult to face one or two definite difficulties than an army of shadowy deprivations, and when the division of the family income made it necessary to subtract considerably from her housekeeping allowance, and to saddle her in addition with several outside expenses, Mistress Bridget sighed and showed signs of rebellion.
“Such a lot of trouble for such a trifling saving! ’Twill destroy me altogether to be fussing over every halfpenny. What would it matter if we were a trifle in debt at the end of the year? Geoffrey would pay a hundred pounds without knowing it, and be proud to do it into the bargain!”
“But I won’t accept it. He has done quite enough as it is. He has paid for Pat’s training, and will give him the agency as soon as he is ready to take it, and he paid for Pixie’s lessons in Paris. I could not refuse what was good for them, but I’ll keep my own house, or give it up altogether!” said Jack proudly, and Sylvia nodded her head in emphatic approval from her place of vantage on the sofa.
Pat and Miles also applauded the declaration of independence, and accepted their own share in the contemplated economies with unperturbed serenity, while Pixie sat solemnly in a corner, turning her eyes on the face of each speaker in turns, her shoulders heaving with suppressed emotion. Of all the members of the family it was evident that she took the present difficulty most seriously, and Sylvia was strengthened in the conviction that she had heard and taken to heart the reference to herself which had been made in the afternoon.
She made no reference to the subject, but three times over the next day Sylvia entered a room in time to hear a hurried rustle and scramble, and behold Pixie gazing into the fire with an air of elaborate unconsciousness—the newspaper rolled into a ball beneath her chair. It was always open at the advertisement sheet, moreover, so that the onlooker had not much difficulty in guessing the character of the letters which were inscribed with such deep-breathed earnestness in the afternoon.
They were posted in the pillar-box at the corner of the road, and Pixie marched back to the house and sat herself down with an air of mysterious importance. Her head was held proudly erect, her lips pressed tightly together as if nothing, no nothing, would induce her to put her secret into words, and Sylvia smiled to herself, and from the experiences of a week’s acquaintance, gave her exactly five minutes in which to divulge the whole story.
“If you were threatened with a danger—a hidjus danger—what should you think would be the best way to avoid it?” asked Pixie earnestly, at the expiration of two minutes and a half.
Sarah had that moment brought in the lamp and brushed up the fire, and the little room looked wonderfully cheerful and cosy. It was just the time and opportunity for a confidential chat, and Sylvia sat herself down in the arm-chair with a pleasant sense of expectancy. She was allowed to sit up for an hour or two in the day, and that in itself was a cheering circumstance.
“If I were threatened with a danger, how should I try to avoid it? I really don’t know, Pixie. What do you advise yourself?” she asked smilingly, and Pixie smote her fists together, and stamped on the floor with dramatic emphasis.
“Ye ought to march straight out and meet it! That’s what Thérèse has been teaching me all these years, for, says she, ‘Bridgie, the dear, is so soft-hearted that she’ll never believe but that everything will come right if ye sit still and look pleasant.’ The last thing but one that she said to me before parting was that I must look after the family and keep them out of trouble; so I’ve been reading over the papers to see how I can make some money, and it’s wonderful the choice you can have! I thought at first about taking a situation, but it’s better that I should stay at home to look after Bridgie, and teach her how to use up the scraps as they do in France. Me dear, the most elegant soup made out of nothing at all but the scraps ye would throw to the hens! There’s one advertisement which says a lady like meself can earn a handsome income in her own home, without interfering with present duties. It sounds so light and pleasant that it quite struck my fancy; and only two shillings for samples and directions!”
“Oh, Pixie, did you really send it? I’m so sorry you did that without telling me first. I’m afraid it’s a hoax, dear! It sounds too good to be true!”
“But it says so plainly in those very words. I’ll show it to you if you like. It’s printed!” cried Pixie in a tone of shocked reproof which silenced the protests on Sylvia’s lips. If her suspicions were correct, time would teach the lesson that even printed advertisements were not always accurately truthful, but she had not the heart to dilate on the perfidiousness of mankind in the presence of such innocent trustfulness. She murmured apologetic phrases, and Pixie beamed once more and continued her story.
“There’s another gentleman wants you to go round and sell books. I’ve written to him, but I’d rather do things at home. Did you ever hear of anyone making a fortune by addressing envelopes? They want someone to do that too, but I write so slowly meself, and it’s only a shilling a thousand. A literery lady is wanted to correct proofs. That would be nice, because they might be stories. How do you spell ‘literery’, Sylvia?”
“L-i-t-e-r-a-r-y!”
“Not ‘e-r-y?’ You are quite sure?”
“Absolutely sure!”
“I put ‘literery’!” said Pixie, with a sigh. Perhaps it will prejudice him against me! Spelling was never my strong point, but that was worse than ignorance—with the paper lying beside me for reference! The best of all is a shop that wants you to colour photographs. I love painting pictures, and the scrap-books I’ve done for hospitals would fill a museum. Of course, these would have to be done carefully, but I’ve seen Thérèse sketching at Versailles, and artists painting in the Louvre, and I’m quick at imitating. They wanted three shillings to sell you the paints and brushes, and it will be cheap if it brings in pounds a week. “Twas a good thing Esmeralda gave me a sovereign before she left, and I could get the stamps without anyone being the wiser. I thought, you see, it would be so nice to keep it a secret until I could go to Bridgie with my earnings in my hand. You will promise truly and faithfully not to tell?”
“If you will promise not to send any more money without asking my advice. I think you ought to do that, Pixie!”
“I shan’t need to, me dear. I’ll earn enough as it is. Will I get the replies to-morrow, do you think? The letters ought to be delivered to-night!”
Sylvia felt doubtful whether answers would ever be received, but as events proved, she was wrong, and Pixie was right, for her inquiries were answered by return of post, and on the first opportunity handed over for inspection. The philanthropist who provided remunerative work for gentlewomen at their own homes without interfering with present duties, forwarded samples as promised, the which Pixie spread out on the table with an air of depression. They consisted of a two-inch length of a simple stamping-off pattern, a fragment of black net, and a few dozen common jet beads, wrapped in a paper.
“You iron off the pattern on the net, and then you sew round it with the beads, and then ye cut off the scallops, and then it’s jetted lace!” she explained anxiously. “And when it’s jetted lace, ye go out and sell it to the shops.” She sighed deeply, and turned over the patterns with her fingers. “How much a yard is jetted lace, Sylvia?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I should think a narrow width like this could not be over a couple of shillings at the most.”
“And it would take me months to do, and be puckered at that! It’s such wobbly stuff to sew. Even if I did a lot, I’m afraid the shops would never buy it.”
“I’m afraid not, Pixie. I wouldn’t waste your time trying, dear!”
Pixie sighed again and carefully replaced the fragments in their envelopes.
“It was very kind of them to send them so soon, and if I was clever with my fingers, it would be a fine idea, but I know quite well it would be puckered. Will I send back the patterns, do you think? They might be useful for someone else.”
“I think whoever sent them can very well afford to send another selection to the next inquirer. I should not dream of wasting a stamp on them,” replied Sylvia drily, and as she spoke she pulled Pixie nearer to her, and kissed her with a fervour which was somewhat startling to the recipient.
“Are ye sorry for me?” she queried. “Ye needn’t be, because I shall have so much to do with the photographs that I am not disappointed a bit. They have sent me one to paint, and if I do it to their satisfaction they can keep me in constant work. They don’t say anything about paying, but I expect that will be settled next week. Here’s the paints, and here’s the lady!”
Sylvia looked, and beheld half a dozen cheap paints such as are found in a child’s sixpenny box, a thick and a thin brush, equally common, and a photograph of a buxom lady with a mop of tousled hair, swinging in a hammock-chair under some trees, while a flight of marble steps led up to a palatial mansion in the background. She read the letter, and found that Pixie had accurately described its contents. It appeared that the firm was in pressing need of outside help, and had practically unlimited work to bestow upon ladies “with artistic tendencies.”
Judging from the note-paper, the handwriting, and the style of the photograph itself, the critics could not be very severe, and for a moment Sylvia found herself wondering if by chance Pixie had indeed found some work within her scope. She herself knew little about painting, but after a long discussion of the different features of the photograph, she succeeded in dissuading the youthful artist from a somewhat violent scheme of colour, and in extracting a promise that the completed picture should be brought across the road for her inspection before it was despatched, for by this time Miss Munns was once more settled at home, and the last evening of the happy visit had arrived.
Sylvia tried not to allow herself to think how quiet and dull the days would seem with only Aunt Margaret as a companion; how hard it would be to sit contentedly playing cribbage in the evenings, while across the road, within a stone’s-throw from the window, was this dear, bright, homey room, full of young creatures like herself. She told herself that she had had a happy holiday, and ought to go home refreshed and cheered. She made noble resolutions to be more patient and considerate, and pretended that she was really quite relieved to be leaving Jack O’Shaughnessy, for it was far more difficult to withstand the humbugging eyes now that she knew what a dear kind fellow he was at heart, and he on his part seemed quite embarrassingly sorry to say good-bye!
“You have not been half so nice to me lately as you were the first few days,” he said plaintively in the privacy afforded by the strains of a comb orchestra vigorously conducted at the end of the room. “I must have offended you without meaning it; clumsy fellow that I am!”
“Oh dear no, not at all. It is only that I am getting better, and my natural bad temper is asserting itself. Most people are mild when they are ill,” she replied lightly, but Jack was not so easily silenced.
“That’s not the reason. Saving your presence, you are better tempered, not worse, but there’s a difference all the same. I suppose you don’t like me so well now that you know me better?”
“On the contrary, I like you infinitely more.” Sylvia hesitated a moment, then added with sudden resolution, “I thought you were a very agreeable flirt; you amused me, and I enjoyed being flattered; but now I think you are a real good friend, and I treat you in a different way. One gets tired of compliments, but friendship grows better and better all the time.”
Jack coloured, and was silent. Sylvia wondered if he were offended by the plainness of her words, but when he turned to her again, there was the frank, manly expression in his eyes which she liked most to see.
“May I come and call upon you sometimes in the evening? I shall have no chance of seeing you in the daytime.”
“I should like it very much, but it is not my house, remember, and Aunt Margaret is not fond of young men.”
“But I am terribly partial to old ladies, and I never met the one yet that wasn’t wrapped up in me before we parted. I’ve got a way with old ladies!” said Jack complacently. “There was an old dear in Ireland who managed everyone for miles around, but she was as soft as putty in my hands. The poor girl, her daughter, was not allowed to join in any of the fun that was on hand, and when there was anything special coming on, she’d write pitiful letters and ask me to lunch. I always went—she had very good eyes of her own!—and she’d meet me in the drive, and put me up to what she wanted. By the time the old lady had told me all about her hens, and her servants, and her latest quarrel with her neighbours, and I’d flattered her by saying her rheumatism was the pick of any in the county, she’d be ready to eat out of my hand. And I’d fix up to call for Mollie, and see her safely home after the show was over.”
“Mollie? A pretty name! Is it common in Ireland?”
“It is so. We knew a stack of them at Knock, but Mollie Burrell was the best of the bundle.”
Sylvia smiled, but her lips felt stiff, and the effort was not a success. A little weight of depression settled over her spirits. She felt anything but sympathetic for the deprivations of Miss Mollie Burrell.
Chapter Thirteen.Bargain-Hunting.Two days after Sylvia’s return home, Pixie took the tinted photograph across the road for inspection. She had toiled at it with conscientious effort, but, alas! the result was pathetically bad, the paint being laid on in uncertain daubs, while carmine cheeks and scarlet lips laid the buxom lady under suspicion of sickening for fever or some other deadly complaint. Pixie herself was vaguely disquieted by the general effect, but, as she earnestly explained, you “got used to it after a bit, and it didn’t look so bad. And even if it was only half price this time, it would be encouraging to the family!”Sylvia refrained from criticism, but helped to pack the work of art between two sheets of cardboard in readiness for the post, and after that was done, took her visitor downstairs to be introduced to Miss Munns.The old lady was sitting darning stockings, with a newspaper spread over one half of the table and a little bowl standing ready to receive the snippings of worsted. On the baize cloth at the other end stood an indiarubber plant and four little artificial ferns. A gas fire flickered in the grate, a wire blind shut out the view, the chairs stood ranged in mathematical order against the walls, the very newspaper was folded into an accurate square and put away in the rack, and Pixie looked round with awed eyes the while she was introduced.“This is Bridgie’s youngest sister, Aunt Margaret—Pixie O’Shaughnessy.”“I hope you are quite well, my dear,” said Miss Munns.“Good morning, madame!” said Pixie in her most Parisian manner, not attempting to shake hands, but bowing with an air of gracious effusion from half-way across the room.Aunt Margaret let the stocking drop in her lap and stared over her spectacles, shaking her head solemnly as Sylvia related how the new-comer had just returned from Paris, where she had been living under the charge of an old governess.“That accounts for it!” she said darkly, when the explanations were finished. “I never can understand why people want to go abroad when there are so many good schools at their door. When I was a girl I went to Miss Banks at Peckham, and it was most select. Every girl over fifteen wore a bonnet; mine was white Dunstable, with check ribbons, blue and white. I wore it with a dress with silk pipings, and it was very much admired. My cousin Gertrude went to Paris, because her father had business on the Continent, and she never got over it for years. They gave her dreadful food, and when she could not eat it, it was put aside and brought up meal after meal. She told me as a solemn fact that they used to put fruit in the soup, and there was something dreadful made of cabbages. Did they give you cabbages, my dear?”“Mais oui, madame!” returned Pixie, involuntarily returning to the language of the place of which they were speaking. “But they were delicious, those cabbage! Mademoiselle has without doubt had an unhappy experience. The cabbage of France is a most excellent cabbage. He resembles himself absolutely to an English cabbage, but he is more well prepared.”“Speak English, my dear, for pity’s sake! I never could understand that gibberish. My poor father paid extra for me to learn under a native, but it seemed as if I always turned against it. Well, I don’t understand about the cabbages; Gertrude certainly said they were quite sour, and mixed with all manner of horrible things!”“Perhaps you mean sauerkraut, Aunt Margaret. She would hardly have that in Paris. Are you quite sure it was not Germany where she was at school?”“Berlin, was it? Berlin!” said Miss Munns, meditating with her finger to her lip. “Yes, I think it was, because I remember I always associated it with the wool. All these foreign schools are alike. Nothing comes of them but bowing and scraping. Give me a good sound English education!”Miss Munns threaded her needle through the heel of the black stocking with an expression which seemed to imply that the last word was spoken on that subject, and Pixie put on her most engaging manner as she replied, as if anxious to prove that she was not altogether ruined by her Continental experiences—“Madame is without doubt so clever that she does not need to be taught. Sylvia has told us that you could teach Bridgie better than anyone else. She is the best meaner in the world, is Bridgie, but it comes natural to her to forget. Sylvia said it was wonderful the way you managed the house. You could find the blue-bag in the dark!”“Find—the blue-bag—in the—dark! Why should I find the blue-bag in the dark? What do I want with it in the dark? The blue-bag! Why should I look for the blue-bag?” cried Miss Munns, all anxiety to fathom the meaning of this perplexing statement.The most elaborate explanations on Sylvia’s part failed to solve the mystery, and she kept on reiterating, “Why blue-bag?” in tones of baffled curiosity, while Sylvia lay back in her chair and sighed, and raised her eyebrows and stared hopelessly at the corner of the ceiling. It was a trying moment, but Pixie entered gallantly into the breach, and succeeded in diverting attention into another channel.“It was just to shame us beside you, because we couldn’t find it in the light. The sugar-basin would have done just as well. My family had gone on spending money when there was none to spend, until now at last it’s all gone, and Jack says we must begin to be careful. Bridgie thought maybe if you would give her a hint it would be useful, as she has no one to teach her.”“I never earned a sovereign in my life, but I should be afraid to say how many I have saved!” said Miss Munns complacently. “There is nothing wasted in my house, my dear, and I should be only too thankful to tell your sister the way your servants behave when her back is turned. The light is flaring in their bedroom until after eleven at night, and I’ve seen them myself running after the grocer’s lad to give him extra orders. Does your sister allowance them in butter and sugar? Depend upon it, if she doesn’t, they eat twice as much as they should.“If she brings her books over to me, I will tell her exactly what quantities she ought to order. It’s hard on a young man like your brother to have to provide for such a long family. I suppose you will be doing something for yourself in a couple of years when you are old enough to go about alone. You will be able to turn your education to account, and give lessons in the French language. You look more French than English, as it is, and have just their way of twisting yourself about as you talk.”“Aunt Margaret!” cried Sylvia reproachfully, but Pixie’s eyes brightened as at a sudden suggestion, and she cried eagerly—“Do I? Do I really? Oh, I’m so glad! If you saw me in the street, would you think I was a Parisian? Oh, thank you so much for saying so!”“Humph! You’re easily pleased. I should not take it as a compliment if anyone said that to me. I’m an Englishwoman, and a good subject of Queen Victoria, and I’m thankful to say I look it. No one would mistake me for a French madam!”“No, they wouldn’t. You are a different shape,” said Pixie truthfully, whereupon Miss Munns sent a sharp inquiry over the edge of her spectacles, but the glance which met hers was so guileless that no suspicions could live in its presence. So she said, “Humph!” once more, and that ended the discussion.Pixie renewed her study of the newspapers with fresh interest after this conversation, and made marks against quite a number of advertisements, which, however, she took no active steps to answer, pending the verdict from the photographic company. It came at last, and proved to be a judicious mingling of praise and blame.The painting of the photograph, said the critic, displayed great taste and artistic promise, though unfortunately the execution did not quite come up to the high standard of excellence required by the firm. No doubt this deficiency was largely caused by a lack of proper materials, and he would strongly recommend further expenditure of five shillings, for a complete artist’s outfit, given which, and a little more practice, he had no doubt whatever of being able to send a constant supply of work, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.Sylvia was shown this missive in due course, and tossed it from her with impatient hand.“You must not send it, Pixie! You must not dream of sending it. Don’t you see, dear, they only want to get money from you instead of giving it themselves? You have already sent three shillings, and now they want five more, and probably next time there would be another excuse for getting some more. You can’t afford to throw away money like that, especially without Bridgie’s knowledge or consent. Give it up, dear, and have no more to do with them.”“I will!” said Pixie sadly; “but you mustn’t blame them, poor creatures, for it’s my own fault. It’s the truth that I was short of paints, for the ones they sent were so dry I could hardly get them to mark, and the colours wouldn’t seem to come right. It’s very kind of them to promise me work, but I must give it up, for I can’t do better without taking lessons, and where would be the profit in that? I took hours, and hours, and hours painting that lady, and ye saw yourself she looked more like a beetroot than a human creature. Don’t you say a word to Bridgie, and I’ll promise you faithfully I won’t send another penny. I’ve a new idea in my head, which maybe will turn out best of all.”She refused to say anything more explicit on the subject, but hinted that definite information might be forthcoming on the following evening, and Sylvia wondered what new web for the unwary had caught this most innocent little fly in its meshes. She concluded that Pixie must be expecting another prospectus, but next day the two sisters came across the road for a few minutes’ chaten routefor a shopping expedition, and all the time that the elder was speaking, the younger stood in the background, rolling her eyes and mouthing unintelligible messages, evidently intended to convey the information that some great issue was at stake.“Don’t you envy me, me dear? I am going to buy new clothes!” announced Bridgie, beaming. “Esmeralda gave me a five-pound note before she left, and, ‘For pity’s sake,’ she said, ‘buy yourself a decent gown! You’re a disgrace to be walking about the streets, and with Pixie so smart as she is, too. Now’s your chance to get something cheap at the sales!’ and with that you should have heard her groan to think she’d lost all the pleasure of hunting for bargains through marrying a rich man! I want a dress, and a jacket, and a hat, and a blouse or two for the house, and gloves, and—”“Don’t you wish you may get them!” cried Sylvia mockingly. She watched the two girls walk down the road, and noted that Pixie was arrayed in her very best clothes to do honour to the mysterious errand, whatever it might be. Her felt hat was tilted at an extraordinary angle; the smart little jacket looked quite different from the ordinary bulky winter garments which one was accustomed to see; her boots were of patent leather, and her muff was decorated with a huge rosette, and ends of ribbon.Miss Munns might have truthfully declared that she looked French this morning, and there was a suggestion of a strut in her walk which seemed to speak of personal satisfaction in her appearance. Bridgie did indeed look shabby beside her, but then no clothes, however poor, could ever make the sweet thing look anything but a lady, and she too held up her head in triumphant fashion, for was she not going shopping with five bright golden sovereigns in her purse?When Oxford Street was reached, the novices eagerly examined the windows of a famous drapery establishment, in which the most thrilling bargains were displayed to decoy the passers-by, and on the happy Irish principle of placing the pleasantest duty first on the list, elbowed their way upstairs to the millinery department. The room was blocked with a throng of excited females all engaged in lifting hats from their pegs and trying them on before the various mirrors. Sometimes two of the number would set their affections on the same treasure, and then the one who had been unsuccessful in obtaining possession would stand gloomily by ready to pounce upon it the moment her adversary laid it down. Two or three assistants stood at bay trying to answer a dozen questioners at once, and experienced bargain-hunters were turning over the contents of the drawers with one hand, and grasping four or five bonnets in the other.For a few moments the new-comers were too much bewildered to know what to do first, but the spirit of plunder soon laid hold of them in their turn, and they began to pounce upon the most fascinating of the spoils and to try them on in breathless excitement.Bridgie looked charming in all, her small head and cloud-like hair making her an easy person to suit, but, alas! the prices still seemed ruinous to her innocent mind, and she sadly turned her attention to the more simple of the models. These were by no means so becoming as their predecessors, and Pixie’s criticisms were as usual strictly truthful as she regarded them.“Ye look a fright. Ye look old enough to be your own mother. It takes all the colour out of your face. You look quite yellow!”Bridgie tore the hat from her head, and seized upon a modest brown toque which lay close at hand.“Is that better, then? Is that dowdy enough to suit you?”“It’s hidjus!” cried Pixie with emphasis. “It’s uglier than the other. I wouldn’t have it given to me as a present. You look an object from the side!”“But it’s useful—it is useful!” sighed Bridgie dejectedly. Buying hats was not so exciting as she had imagined if she were obliged to abjure the pretty ones, and buy the useful in which she appeared to such painful disadvantage. “And I expect it is cheap, Pixie. Very cheap! I have, to think of that, remember!”She tilted the hand-glass to the side to study the effect which had been condemned, and as she did so, a sepulchral voice said grimly in her ear, “When you have quite finished with my hat!” and she turned to behold a severe-looking, elderly lady staring fixedly at her headgear, and holding out her hand to claim it as her own. Poor Bridgie! her cheeks flamed for the next hour. She was so hot, and breathless, and agitated that she would have rushed straightway from the department, but Pixie stood her ground and remained serenely unperturbed.“’Twas true!” she cried. “’Twas only the truth she heard.’Twashidjus, and no words of yours would make it pretty. And as for cheap, she ought to take that for a compliment, seeing the pains she’s taking to get another like it! Somebody must be trying on your own hat, I’m thinking. It was lying over the rail of that chair where the fat lady is resting. You’d better be asking her what she’s done with it.”Bridgie walked forward and put an anxious Inquiry, whereupon the fat lady leapt up in alarm, and there against the back of the chair lay a poor flattened object, with battered crown and crestfallen bows—all that was left of Bridgie’s very best hat! She was horrified at the sight, but the fat lady was more horrified still, and so lavish in her apologies that it was impossible to cherish anger against her. She insisted upon herself smoothing out the ribbons and moulding the crown into something like the original shape, and in doing so bestowed the information that there was another millinery department downstairs, where there might possibly be less crowd and more chance of attention.
Two days after Sylvia’s return home, Pixie took the tinted photograph across the road for inspection. She had toiled at it with conscientious effort, but, alas! the result was pathetically bad, the paint being laid on in uncertain daubs, while carmine cheeks and scarlet lips laid the buxom lady under suspicion of sickening for fever or some other deadly complaint. Pixie herself was vaguely disquieted by the general effect, but, as she earnestly explained, you “got used to it after a bit, and it didn’t look so bad. And even if it was only half price this time, it would be encouraging to the family!”
Sylvia refrained from criticism, but helped to pack the work of art between two sheets of cardboard in readiness for the post, and after that was done, took her visitor downstairs to be introduced to Miss Munns.
The old lady was sitting darning stockings, with a newspaper spread over one half of the table and a little bowl standing ready to receive the snippings of worsted. On the baize cloth at the other end stood an indiarubber plant and four little artificial ferns. A gas fire flickered in the grate, a wire blind shut out the view, the chairs stood ranged in mathematical order against the walls, the very newspaper was folded into an accurate square and put away in the rack, and Pixie looked round with awed eyes the while she was introduced.
“This is Bridgie’s youngest sister, Aunt Margaret—Pixie O’Shaughnessy.”
“I hope you are quite well, my dear,” said Miss Munns.
“Good morning, madame!” said Pixie in her most Parisian manner, not attempting to shake hands, but bowing with an air of gracious effusion from half-way across the room.
Aunt Margaret let the stocking drop in her lap and stared over her spectacles, shaking her head solemnly as Sylvia related how the new-comer had just returned from Paris, where she had been living under the charge of an old governess.
“That accounts for it!” she said darkly, when the explanations were finished. “I never can understand why people want to go abroad when there are so many good schools at their door. When I was a girl I went to Miss Banks at Peckham, and it was most select. Every girl over fifteen wore a bonnet; mine was white Dunstable, with check ribbons, blue and white. I wore it with a dress with silk pipings, and it was very much admired. My cousin Gertrude went to Paris, because her father had business on the Continent, and she never got over it for years. They gave her dreadful food, and when she could not eat it, it was put aside and brought up meal after meal. She told me as a solemn fact that they used to put fruit in the soup, and there was something dreadful made of cabbages. Did they give you cabbages, my dear?”
“Mais oui, madame!” returned Pixie, involuntarily returning to the language of the place of which they were speaking. “But they were delicious, those cabbage! Mademoiselle has without doubt had an unhappy experience. The cabbage of France is a most excellent cabbage. He resembles himself absolutely to an English cabbage, but he is more well prepared.”
“Speak English, my dear, for pity’s sake! I never could understand that gibberish. My poor father paid extra for me to learn under a native, but it seemed as if I always turned against it. Well, I don’t understand about the cabbages; Gertrude certainly said they were quite sour, and mixed with all manner of horrible things!”
“Perhaps you mean sauerkraut, Aunt Margaret. She would hardly have that in Paris. Are you quite sure it was not Germany where she was at school?”
“Berlin, was it? Berlin!” said Miss Munns, meditating with her finger to her lip. “Yes, I think it was, because I remember I always associated it with the wool. All these foreign schools are alike. Nothing comes of them but bowing and scraping. Give me a good sound English education!”
Miss Munns threaded her needle through the heel of the black stocking with an expression which seemed to imply that the last word was spoken on that subject, and Pixie put on her most engaging manner as she replied, as if anxious to prove that she was not altogether ruined by her Continental experiences—
“Madame is without doubt so clever that she does not need to be taught. Sylvia has told us that you could teach Bridgie better than anyone else. She is the best meaner in the world, is Bridgie, but it comes natural to her to forget. Sylvia said it was wonderful the way you managed the house. You could find the blue-bag in the dark!”
“Find—the blue-bag—in the—dark! Why should I find the blue-bag in the dark? What do I want with it in the dark? The blue-bag! Why should I look for the blue-bag?” cried Miss Munns, all anxiety to fathom the meaning of this perplexing statement.
The most elaborate explanations on Sylvia’s part failed to solve the mystery, and she kept on reiterating, “Why blue-bag?” in tones of baffled curiosity, while Sylvia lay back in her chair and sighed, and raised her eyebrows and stared hopelessly at the corner of the ceiling. It was a trying moment, but Pixie entered gallantly into the breach, and succeeded in diverting attention into another channel.
“It was just to shame us beside you, because we couldn’t find it in the light. The sugar-basin would have done just as well. My family had gone on spending money when there was none to spend, until now at last it’s all gone, and Jack says we must begin to be careful. Bridgie thought maybe if you would give her a hint it would be useful, as she has no one to teach her.”
“I never earned a sovereign in my life, but I should be afraid to say how many I have saved!” said Miss Munns complacently. “There is nothing wasted in my house, my dear, and I should be only too thankful to tell your sister the way your servants behave when her back is turned. The light is flaring in their bedroom until after eleven at night, and I’ve seen them myself running after the grocer’s lad to give him extra orders. Does your sister allowance them in butter and sugar? Depend upon it, if she doesn’t, they eat twice as much as they should.
“If she brings her books over to me, I will tell her exactly what quantities she ought to order. It’s hard on a young man like your brother to have to provide for such a long family. I suppose you will be doing something for yourself in a couple of years when you are old enough to go about alone. You will be able to turn your education to account, and give lessons in the French language. You look more French than English, as it is, and have just their way of twisting yourself about as you talk.”
“Aunt Margaret!” cried Sylvia reproachfully, but Pixie’s eyes brightened as at a sudden suggestion, and she cried eagerly—
“Do I? Do I really? Oh, I’m so glad! If you saw me in the street, would you think I was a Parisian? Oh, thank you so much for saying so!”
“Humph! You’re easily pleased. I should not take it as a compliment if anyone said that to me. I’m an Englishwoman, and a good subject of Queen Victoria, and I’m thankful to say I look it. No one would mistake me for a French madam!”
“No, they wouldn’t. You are a different shape,” said Pixie truthfully, whereupon Miss Munns sent a sharp inquiry over the edge of her spectacles, but the glance which met hers was so guileless that no suspicions could live in its presence. So she said, “Humph!” once more, and that ended the discussion.
Pixie renewed her study of the newspapers with fresh interest after this conversation, and made marks against quite a number of advertisements, which, however, she took no active steps to answer, pending the verdict from the photographic company. It came at last, and proved to be a judicious mingling of praise and blame.
The painting of the photograph, said the critic, displayed great taste and artistic promise, though unfortunately the execution did not quite come up to the high standard of excellence required by the firm. No doubt this deficiency was largely caused by a lack of proper materials, and he would strongly recommend further expenditure of five shillings, for a complete artist’s outfit, given which, and a little more practice, he had no doubt whatever of being able to send a constant supply of work, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Sylvia was shown this missive in due course, and tossed it from her with impatient hand.
“You must not send it, Pixie! You must not dream of sending it. Don’t you see, dear, they only want to get money from you instead of giving it themselves? You have already sent three shillings, and now they want five more, and probably next time there would be another excuse for getting some more. You can’t afford to throw away money like that, especially without Bridgie’s knowledge or consent. Give it up, dear, and have no more to do with them.”
“I will!” said Pixie sadly; “but you mustn’t blame them, poor creatures, for it’s my own fault. It’s the truth that I was short of paints, for the ones they sent were so dry I could hardly get them to mark, and the colours wouldn’t seem to come right. It’s very kind of them to promise me work, but I must give it up, for I can’t do better without taking lessons, and where would be the profit in that? I took hours, and hours, and hours painting that lady, and ye saw yourself she looked more like a beetroot than a human creature. Don’t you say a word to Bridgie, and I’ll promise you faithfully I won’t send another penny. I’ve a new idea in my head, which maybe will turn out best of all.”
She refused to say anything more explicit on the subject, but hinted that definite information might be forthcoming on the following evening, and Sylvia wondered what new web for the unwary had caught this most innocent little fly in its meshes. She concluded that Pixie must be expecting another prospectus, but next day the two sisters came across the road for a few minutes’ chaten routefor a shopping expedition, and all the time that the elder was speaking, the younger stood in the background, rolling her eyes and mouthing unintelligible messages, evidently intended to convey the information that some great issue was at stake.
“Don’t you envy me, me dear? I am going to buy new clothes!” announced Bridgie, beaming. “Esmeralda gave me a five-pound note before she left, and, ‘For pity’s sake,’ she said, ‘buy yourself a decent gown! You’re a disgrace to be walking about the streets, and with Pixie so smart as she is, too. Now’s your chance to get something cheap at the sales!’ and with that you should have heard her groan to think she’d lost all the pleasure of hunting for bargains through marrying a rich man! I want a dress, and a jacket, and a hat, and a blouse or two for the house, and gloves, and—”
“Don’t you wish you may get them!” cried Sylvia mockingly. She watched the two girls walk down the road, and noted that Pixie was arrayed in her very best clothes to do honour to the mysterious errand, whatever it might be. Her felt hat was tilted at an extraordinary angle; the smart little jacket looked quite different from the ordinary bulky winter garments which one was accustomed to see; her boots were of patent leather, and her muff was decorated with a huge rosette, and ends of ribbon.
Miss Munns might have truthfully declared that she looked French this morning, and there was a suggestion of a strut in her walk which seemed to speak of personal satisfaction in her appearance. Bridgie did indeed look shabby beside her, but then no clothes, however poor, could ever make the sweet thing look anything but a lady, and she too held up her head in triumphant fashion, for was she not going shopping with five bright golden sovereigns in her purse?
When Oxford Street was reached, the novices eagerly examined the windows of a famous drapery establishment, in which the most thrilling bargains were displayed to decoy the passers-by, and on the happy Irish principle of placing the pleasantest duty first on the list, elbowed their way upstairs to the millinery department. The room was blocked with a throng of excited females all engaged in lifting hats from their pegs and trying them on before the various mirrors. Sometimes two of the number would set their affections on the same treasure, and then the one who had been unsuccessful in obtaining possession would stand gloomily by ready to pounce upon it the moment her adversary laid it down. Two or three assistants stood at bay trying to answer a dozen questioners at once, and experienced bargain-hunters were turning over the contents of the drawers with one hand, and grasping four or five bonnets in the other.
For a few moments the new-comers were too much bewildered to know what to do first, but the spirit of plunder soon laid hold of them in their turn, and they began to pounce upon the most fascinating of the spoils and to try them on in breathless excitement.
Bridgie looked charming in all, her small head and cloud-like hair making her an easy person to suit, but, alas! the prices still seemed ruinous to her innocent mind, and she sadly turned her attention to the more simple of the models. These were by no means so becoming as their predecessors, and Pixie’s criticisms were as usual strictly truthful as she regarded them.
“Ye look a fright. Ye look old enough to be your own mother. It takes all the colour out of your face. You look quite yellow!”
Bridgie tore the hat from her head, and seized upon a modest brown toque which lay close at hand.
“Is that better, then? Is that dowdy enough to suit you?”
“It’s hidjus!” cried Pixie with emphasis. “It’s uglier than the other. I wouldn’t have it given to me as a present. You look an object from the side!”
“But it’s useful—it is useful!” sighed Bridgie dejectedly. Buying hats was not so exciting as she had imagined if she were obliged to abjure the pretty ones, and buy the useful in which she appeared to such painful disadvantage. “And I expect it is cheap, Pixie. Very cheap! I have, to think of that, remember!”
She tilted the hand-glass to the side to study the effect which had been condemned, and as she did so, a sepulchral voice said grimly in her ear, “When you have quite finished with my hat!” and she turned to behold a severe-looking, elderly lady staring fixedly at her headgear, and holding out her hand to claim it as her own. Poor Bridgie! her cheeks flamed for the next hour. She was so hot, and breathless, and agitated that she would have rushed straightway from the department, but Pixie stood her ground and remained serenely unperturbed.
“’Twas true!” she cried. “’Twas only the truth she heard.’Twashidjus, and no words of yours would make it pretty. And as for cheap, she ought to take that for a compliment, seeing the pains she’s taking to get another like it! Somebody must be trying on your own hat, I’m thinking. It was lying over the rail of that chair where the fat lady is resting. You’d better be asking her what she’s done with it.”
Bridgie walked forward and put an anxious Inquiry, whereupon the fat lady leapt up in alarm, and there against the back of the chair lay a poor flattened object, with battered crown and crestfallen bows—all that was left of Bridgie’s very best hat! She was horrified at the sight, but the fat lady was more horrified still, and so lavish in her apologies that it was impossible to cherish anger against her. She insisted upon herself smoothing out the ribbons and moulding the crown into something like the original shape, and in doing so bestowed the information that there was another millinery department downstairs, where there might possibly be less crowd and more chance of attention.
Chapter Fourteen.“A French Lady.”The sisters agreed to adjourn forthwith, but just at the moment of departing a hat was discovered which was in every way what was required, so they proceeded straight to the remnant counter where a mountain of material was being tossed about hither and thither by a crowd of purchasers three rows deep.“First catch your hare, then cook it,” so runs the old proverb, and in this case the adventure was by no means concluded when the selection was made. It was necessary to pay for what you had bought, and that necessitated a wait of a long half-hour before anyone could be induced to receive the money. The glove department was, if possible, still more crowded, and it was a relief to see through a doorway a vista of a great hall filled with cases of beautiful ready-made dresses, where, despite the presence of a goodly number of customers, there was still enough room to move about, without pushing a way with your elbows.“Let us come in here and breathe again!” cried Bridgie. “I don’t think I was ever so tired during my life, but I’m enjoying myself terribly. It’s so exciting, isn’t it, Pixie?—and those blouse lengths are quite elegant. They will take a lot of making, though. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could buy a dress all ready, and be spared the work?”“It would!” agreed Pixie. “Tell one of the ladies what you’re wanting, and maybe she’ll have the very thing. Here is one coming this way. Speak to her.”Bridgie cleared her throat nervously as she made her request, for the show-woman was a most impressive figure, tall, incredibly slight, with elaborately arranged hair, satin skirts sweeping the ground, and a manner that was quite painfully superior. She swept a scrutinising glance over the sisters as she listened to the request for a simple house dress, volunteered the information that, “Our cheapest costumes are in this stand!” in a blighting tone, and began pulling out the skirts and exhibiting them in professional manner.“That is a very nice little dress, madam, very neatly made—quite in the latest style! Too light? We are selling a great many light shades this season.—Do you care for this colour? This is a very well-cut gown. Too dark? I am afraid I have not many medium shades.—Here is a pretty gown, very much reduced. Quite a simple little gown, but it looks very well on. This embroidery is all hand-done. The bodice is prettily made.”Bridgie privately thought the simple little gown a most elaborate creation, but her hopes went up as she heard that “very cheap,” and she asked the price with trembling hope, whereupon the show-woman referred to the little ticket sewn on the belt, and said airily,—“Eight and a half guineas, madam. Reduced from twelve. It really is quite a bargain.”“Ye might as well say a thousand pounds!” said Bridgie hopelessly, relapsing into a deep, musical brogue in the emotion of the moment, and, wonder of wonders, the bored superiority of the great lady’s manner gave place to a smile of sympathetic amusement.She was accustomed to customers who asked the prices of a dozen dresses in succession, and then floated away declaring that they would “think it over,” never, as she knew well, to return again; but not one in a thousand was honest enough to make a confession of poverty! She lived in an atmosphere of vanity and affectation, and put on her haughty manners every morning with her black satin dress; but at night she was only a poor, tired, working woman, going home to a dingy lodging, and dividing her earnings with an invalid mother and a family of struggling brothers and sisters. Her heart went out to this other girl who was so evidently a lady despite her poverty, and when Bridgie mentioned a ludicrously small sum as the limit to which she was prepared to go, she showed neither surprise nor the thinly-veiled contempt which is usual under the circumstances, but volunteered some really useful information in its place.“You will not be able to buy any ready-made costume for that price, madam, but there will be a special sale of dress materials on Tuesday next. If you could be here quite early in the morning, and go straight to the counter under the clock, you would find some wonderful bargains. I should advise you to leave it until then, but perhaps there is some other department to which I could direct you.”“Thank you, I’m dreadfully tired. Could we go somewhere, and have a cup of tea?”The way was pointed out, and the sisters mounted the stairs once more, took possession of a little table in a corner, and leant back wearily in their chairs. The room was crowded like the others, but it was comparatively quiet, for the ladies were resting after the fray, stifling surreptitious yawns, and sipping tea with languid enjoyment.It was a long time before Bridgie could find anyone to attend to her wants, and meantime the temptation of the parcels lying before her was too great to be resisted. “I really must look at those gloves and the lace ties that are wrapped up with them! I never had so many new pairs in my life, but they were so cheap that I hadn’t the heart to leave them. ’Twill be a refreshment to gloat over them until the tea comes!” She untied the string and complacently folded back the paper, but, alas! what was then revealed was the reverse of refreshing, for, in some mysterious manner, the gloves and laces had disappeared, and in their place lay a fragment of dull, prosaic flannel, at which the poor bargain-hunter stared with dilated eyes.“F–flannel!” she gasped. “Flannel! It was gloves when it was made up. What’s the matter with it—is it witchcraft?”“I’d call it stupidity, if you asked my opinion,” said Pixie calmly. “You’ve stolen a poor creature’s parcel, and perhaps she wanted to make a poultice with it. It will be awful for her when she goes home, and her husband groaning in agony, and nothing to relieve him but two lace ties! I pity her when she finds it out.”“She has stolen my gloves. I’m not sorry for her at all, and if she is an honest woman she will bring them back at once and hand them in to the office. I shall take the wretched flannel there the moment we go downstairs, but I’ve a conviction that I’ll never see my parcel again. I suppose they got changed at one of those crowded counters. I don’t think I care for sales very much, Pixie; they are too expensive. We will go straight home after we have had tea.”“We will so, and make haste about it. I wanted specially to be back by four o’clock.”To Bridgie’s surprise, however, ten minutes before the omnibus reached the corner at which they were wont to alight, Pixie beckoned to the conductor to stop, and announced her intention of walking the rest of the way. There was no time to discuss the point, and as she herself was too tired to walk a step farther than she was obliged, she sat still and watched the little figure affectionately until the omnibus rounded a corner and it was hidden from sight.She would have been astonished if she had seen the sudden energy with which Pixie immediately turned right about face and walked away in the opposite direction, taking a crumpled square of newspaper from her pocket, and reading over a certain advertisement with eager attention.“‘Wanted a French lady.’—I’m not whole French, but I’m half. Haven’t I been in their country nearly two years? ‘To amuse two children.’—I’d amuse a dozen, and never know I was doing it! ‘And perfect them in the language for a couple of hours every morning.’ Look at that, now, it’s better than the jetted lace! Two hours wouldn’t interfere with me one bit, for I’ve all the day to do nothing. ‘Apply personally between four and six at Seven, Fitzjames Crescent.’ Only ten minutes’ walk from me own door, as if it had been made on purpose to suit me! And quite a good-looking house it is, with real silk curtains in the windows.”She tripped undauntedly up the steps and pressed the electric bell, and, all unseen to her eyes, the little god of fate peered at her from behind the fat white pillars of the portico, and clapped his little hands in triumph.
The sisters agreed to adjourn forthwith, but just at the moment of departing a hat was discovered which was in every way what was required, so they proceeded straight to the remnant counter where a mountain of material was being tossed about hither and thither by a crowd of purchasers three rows deep.
“First catch your hare, then cook it,” so runs the old proverb, and in this case the adventure was by no means concluded when the selection was made. It was necessary to pay for what you had bought, and that necessitated a wait of a long half-hour before anyone could be induced to receive the money. The glove department was, if possible, still more crowded, and it was a relief to see through a doorway a vista of a great hall filled with cases of beautiful ready-made dresses, where, despite the presence of a goodly number of customers, there was still enough room to move about, without pushing a way with your elbows.
“Let us come in here and breathe again!” cried Bridgie. “I don’t think I was ever so tired during my life, but I’m enjoying myself terribly. It’s so exciting, isn’t it, Pixie?—and those blouse lengths are quite elegant. They will take a lot of making, though. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could buy a dress all ready, and be spared the work?”
“It would!” agreed Pixie. “Tell one of the ladies what you’re wanting, and maybe she’ll have the very thing. Here is one coming this way. Speak to her.”
Bridgie cleared her throat nervously as she made her request, for the show-woman was a most impressive figure, tall, incredibly slight, with elaborately arranged hair, satin skirts sweeping the ground, and a manner that was quite painfully superior. She swept a scrutinising glance over the sisters as she listened to the request for a simple house dress, volunteered the information that, “Our cheapest costumes are in this stand!” in a blighting tone, and began pulling out the skirts and exhibiting them in professional manner.
“That is a very nice little dress, madam, very neatly made—quite in the latest style! Too light? We are selling a great many light shades this season.—Do you care for this colour? This is a very well-cut gown. Too dark? I am afraid I have not many medium shades.—Here is a pretty gown, very much reduced. Quite a simple little gown, but it looks very well on. This embroidery is all hand-done. The bodice is prettily made.”
Bridgie privately thought the simple little gown a most elaborate creation, but her hopes went up as she heard that “very cheap,” and she asked the price with trembling hope, whereupon the show-woman referred to the little ticket sewn on the belt, and said airily,—“Eight and a half guineas, madam. Reduced from twelve. It really is quite a bargain.”
“Ye might as well say a thousand pounds!” said Bridgie hopelessly, relapsing into a deep, musical brogue in the emotion of the moment, and, wonder of wonders, the bored superiority of the great lady’s manner gave place to a smile of sympathetic amusement.
She was accustomed to customers who asked the prices of a dozen dresses in succession, and then floated away declaring that they would “think it over,” never, as she knew well, to return again; but not one in a thousand was honest enough to make a confession of poverty! She lived in an atmosphere of vanity and affectation, and put on her haughty manners every morning with her black satin dress; but at night she was only a poor, tired, working woman, going home to a dingy lodging, and dividing her earnings with an invalid mother and a family of struggling brothers and sisters. Her heart went out to this other girl who was so evidently a lady despite her poverty, and when Bridgie mentioned a ludicrously small sum as the limit to which she was prepared to go, she showed neither surprise nor the thinly-veiled contempt which is usual under the circumstances, but volunteered some really useful information in its place.
“You will not be able to buy any ready-made costume for that price, madam, but there will be a special sale of dress materials on Tuesday next. If you could be here quite early in the morning, and go straight to the counter under the clock, you would find some wonderful bargains. I should advise you to leave it until then, but perhaps there is some other department to which I could direct you.”
“Thank you, I’m dreadfully tired. Could we go somewhere, and have a cup of tea?”
The way was pointed out, and the sisters mounted the stairs once more, took possession of a little table in a corner, and leant back wearily in their chairs. The room was crowded like the others, but it was comparatively quiet, for the ladies were resting after the fray, stifling surreptitious yawns, and sipping tea with languid enjoyment.
It was a long time before Bridgie could find anyone to attend to her wants, and meantime the temptation of the parcels lying before her was too great to be resisted. “I really must look at those gloves and the lace ties that are wrapped up with them! I never had so many new pairs in my life, but they were so cheap that I hadn’t the heart to leave them. ’Twill be a refreshment to gloat over them until the tea comes!” She untied the string and complacently folded back the paper, but, alas! what was then revealed was the reverse of refreshing, for, in some mysterious manner, the gloves and laces had disappeared, and in their place lay a fragment of dull, prosaic flannel, at which the poor bargain-hunter stared with dilated eyes.
“F–flannel!” she gasped. “Flannel! It was gloves when it was made up. What’s the matter with it—is it witchcraft?”
“I’d call it stupidity, if you asked my opinion,” said Pixie calmly. “You’ve stolen a poor creature’s parcel, and perhaps she wanted to make a poultice with it. It will be awful for her when she goes home, and her husband groaning in agony, and nothing to relieve him but two lace ties! I pity her when she finds it out.”
“She has stolen my gloves. I’m not sorry for her at all, and if she is an honest woman she will bring them back at once and hand them in to the office. I shall take the wretched flannel there the moment we go downstairs, but I’ve a conviction that I’ll never see my parcel again. I suppose they got changed at one of those crowded counters. I don’t think I care for sales very much, Pixie; they are too expensive. We will go straight home after we have had tea.”
“We will so, and make haste about it. I wanted specially to be back by four o’clock.”
To Bridgie’s surprise, however, ten minutes before the omnibus reached the corner at which they were wont to alight, Pixie beckoned to the conductor to stop, and announced her intention of walking the rest of the way. There was no time to discuss the point, and as she herself was too tired to walk a step farther than she was obliged, she sat still and watched the little figure affectionately until the omnibus rounded a corner and it was hidden from sight.
She would have been astonished if she had seen the sudden energy with which Pixie immediately turned right about face and walked away in the opposite direction, taking a crumpled square of newspaper from her pocket, and reading over a certain advertisement with eager attention.
“‘Wanted a French lady.’—I’m not whole French, but I’m half. Haven’t I been in their country nearly two years? ‘To amuse two children.’—I’d amuse a dozen, and never know I was doing it! ‘And perfect them in the language for a couple of hours every morning.’ Look at that, now, it’s better than the jetted lace! Two hours wouldn’t interfere with me one bit, for I’ve all the day to do nothing. ‘Apply personally between four and six at Seven, Fitzjames Crescent.’ Only ten minutes’ walk from me own door, as if it had been made on purpose to suit me! And quite a good-looking house it is, with real silk curtains in the windows.”
She tripped undauntedly up the steps and pressed the electric bell, and, all unseen to her eyes, the little god of fate peered at her from behind the fat white pillars of the portico, and clapped his little hands in triumph.
Chapter Fifteen.Pixie Scores a Success.A butler came to the door, a solemn-looking butler, with a white tie and immaculate black clothes, but he seemed rather stupid for his age, for he asked twice over before he could grasp the fact that Pixie had called in answer to the advertisement, and then stared fixedly at her all the time he was escorting her to the room where the other lady applicants were waiting their turns.Pixie gasped as she looked round and saw ladies, ladies everywhere, on the row of leather chairs ranged along by the wall, on the sofa, on the two easy-lounges by the fireside,—old ladies, young ladies, middle-aged ladies, elderly ladies, shabby and dressy, fat and thin, but all distinctly past their first youth, and all most obviously French. They gaped at the new-comer, even as the butler had done, and she bowed graciously from side to side, and said, “Bon jour, mesdames!” in her most Parisian manner, then squeezed herself into a little corner by the window and listened entranced to the never-ending stream of conversation.A room full of Englishwomen would under the circumstances have preserved a depressed and solemn silence, but these good ladies chattered like magpies, with such shruggings of shoulders, such waving of hands, such shrillness of emphasis, that Pixie felt as if she were once more domiciled in the Avenue Gustave.The lady in the plaid dress, who occupied the next chair, asked her with frank curiosity to recount then how she found herself in such a position, and, being assured that she was indeed applying for the situation, prophesied that it would never march! She turned and whispered loudly to her companion, “Behold her, the poor pigeon! One sees well that she has the white heart!” But the companion was less amiable, and enraged herself because there were already applicants enough, and with each new-comer her own chance of success became less assured.At intervals of five or ten minutes the butler returned and marshalled the next in order to the presence of the lady of the house, but, short as were the interviews, it was a weary wait before it came to Pixie’s turn, and she wondered fearfully whether Bridgie had taken fright at her absence, and was even now searching the streets in a panic of alarm. The hands of the clock pointed to ten minutes to six before the butler gave the longed-for signal, and she smiled at him in her most friendly manner as she crossed the room towards him. Without any exchange of words she divined that he took more interest in herself than in any of the other applicants, and also that for some mysterious reason he was sorry for her, and imagined that she was making a mistake, and the smile was meant at once as thanks and reassurement.They walked together down the slippery floor, such a slippery, shiny floor, that one felt as if skates would be almost more in keeping than boots, and finally arrived at a cosy little room at the back of the house, where a tired-looking gentleman and a bored-looking lady stood ready to receive her. They looked at each other, they looked at the butler, they looked again at the little pig-tailed figure, with short skirts and beaming, childlike face, and their faces became blank with astonishment.“Bon jour, mademoiselle!” began the lady uncertainly.“Good day to ye!” said Pixie in response, and at that the bewilderment became more marked than ever. The lady sat down and drew a long, weary sigh. She was handsome and young, but very, very thin, and looked as if she had hardly enough energy to go through any more interviews.“Then—then you are not French after all?”“I forgot!” sighed Pixie sadly. She sat down and hitched her chair nearer the fire in sociable fashion. “It’s just like me to make up me mind, and then forget at the right moment! I intended to let you hear me speak French, before I broke it to you that I’m Irish and all my people before me.”“I almost think I should have discovered it for myself!” said the lady, looking as if she were not quite sure whether to be amused or irritated. “But if that is so, what is your business here? I advertised for a French lady.”“You did. I read the advertisement, but if I’m not French I’m just as good, for I’ve just last month returned from Paris, and the lady where I was staying was most particular about my accent. Over in Ireland I was so quick in picking up the brogue that I had to be sent to England to get rid of it, and I was just as handy with another language. If I’d remembered to answer you in French, you would never have known the difference between me and those old ladies who came in first.”“Old ladies, indeed! I’ll never advertise again if this is what it means!” sighed the ladysotto voce. She looked across the room, met a gleam of amusement in her husband’s eyes, and said in a tolerant voice, “Well, then, let me hear you now! I am a pretty good French scholar myself, so you won’t find me easy to deceive!”“Perfectly, madam, perfectly!” cried Pixie, gesticulating assent. She found none of the difficulty in settling what to talk about which handicaps most people under similar circumstances, but poured forth a stream of commonplaces in such fluent, rapid French as showed that she had good reason for boasting of proficiency. When she finished, the lady looked at her husband with a triumphant air, and cried—“There! It shows how important it is for children to learn a language while they are still young. It can never be mastered so well if it is left until they are grown-up.”Then turning to Pixie—“Yes, indeed, you speak French charmingly. I congratulate you, and hope you may find it very useful. You are so young that you cannot have finished your own education. Perhaps you are going to school in England?”“’Deed I am not. I want to teach instead. My brother is a very grand gentleman, but he’s in difficulties. He has a fine estate in Ireland, but it is let, and he’s over in London trying to make enough money to get back again, and that’s none too easy, as you may know yourself, and if I can earn some money it will keep me from being a burden on me friends. I’ve answered quite a lot of advertisements, but there was nothing really to suit me until I saw your own yesterday morning.”“I see! May I ask if your mother knows what you are doing—if you are here with her consent?”Pixie sighed at that, and shook her head in melancholy fashion.“I’ve no mother. She died when I was young, and the Major’s horse threw him two years ago, and I’ve been an orphan ever since. There’s only Bridgie now!”“Poor child!” The lady looked at the quaint figure with a kindly glance, thinking of the two little girls upstairs, and picturing them starting out to fight the world when they should still have been safe within the shelter of the schoolroom. “I’m sorry to hear that. Bridgie, I suppose, is your sister? Does she know what you are doing? Would she be willing for you to apply for a situation in this manner?”“Maybe not at first, but I’d beguile her. I’m the youngest, and I always get my own way. I told Sylvia Trevor, who was staying with us, and she was very kind, giving me good advice not to do it, but it is to be a surprise for Bridgie to help her to pay the bills. If ye want money, what else can you do than try to earn it?”“But not at your age, dear! You are too young yet awhile!” Mrs Wallace crossed the room and seating herself in a chair by Pixie’s side, laid a hand on her shoulder with quite affectionate pressure. “I appreciate your kindly intention, but I am afraid it will be a good many years before you are ready to take a governess’s place. You saw yourself what a difference there was between yourself and the other ladies who came to see me to-day!”“I’m more amusing! Ye wouldn’t believe how amusing I can be when I try! At school there was a prize which was given to the girl who was nicest to the other girls, and they all voted for me, and I’ve got it now and could bring it to show you if you liked. I’m not exactly clever, and there was no chance for anyone else at the bottom of the class, but you didn’t say a word about teaching, except French, and I could talk that all day long!”“Yes! I should be quite satisfied if my girlies spoke as well as you do. Your accent is charming, and you have just the air, but—but you are so young—so ridiculously young!”“So are the children. They’d like me best!” maintained Pixie sturdily, and at that Mr Wallace burst into a laugh. His eyes had been twinkling for some time past, and he had been stroking his moustache as if to conceal his amusement, but now he made no more disguise, but laughed and laughed again, as if he were thoroughly enjoying himself.“Upon my word, Edith, I believe she is right! If you consider the children’s feelings, there is no doubt how they would decide. If you want them kept happy and bright, now’s your chance! After our earlier experiences this is really quite refreshing, and I am beginning to think your advertisement has been of some use after all. How would it be if you interviewed Miss Bridgie—I didn’t catch the second name—and if she is agreeable, you might perhaps make some temporary arrangement!”“O’Shaughnessy. It’s Irish! I’m sure Bridgie would say yes, for it would be occupation for me in the mornings, and so near that I could come by myself. We live in Rutland Road, but the house is so small ye would hardly notice it if you passed by. Jack says if he could get London rents in Ireland, he’d never do another honest day’s work while he lived. You could put the whole place down in the hall at Knock Castle, and never know it was there, and Bridgie says she knows every blade of grass in the garden. We had the loveliest grounds at Knock, all the flowers coming up anyway, and volunteers drilling in the park, and the glass-houses full of ferrets and white mice, and tomatoes, and everything you can think of. If I could make some money we should be able to go back sooner than we thought, and Bridgie would be so pleased. When shall I say you are coming to see her?”“I have not promised to come at all. You must not leap at conclusions. It is a most ridiculous scheme, but really—”Mrs Wallace laughed in her turn, and going up to where her husband stood, exchanged a few whispered confidences, some scattered words of which reached the listener’s ear. “Typically Irish! Preposterous! No harm trying. What about Viva? So difficult to manage.”The discussion was still progressing when from above sounded a sudden piercing cry, mounting ever higher and higher, the note sustained in evident but determined effort. Footsteps raced across the floor, followed by a bang as of some heavy wooden structure, a murmured protest, and two distinct sets of shrieks, each warring against the other.Mr Wallace pressed his hands to his head, Mrs Wallace sighed, “Oh dear, dear, dear!” in tones of hopeless distress, but Pixie cried eagerly—“Will I run upstairs and try what I can do? Will I make them stop, and laugh instead?”“You’d deserve the Victoria Cross!” the father declared, while the mother hurried to the door, and led the way with rapid footsteps.“They have been brought up by an Indian ayah, and this English nurse doesn’t understand them a bit. Theyhavetrying tempers, there is no use denying it, but they are dear little creaturesifrightly managed. Oh dear, dear, dear! these dreadful shrieks! They go through my head.”“Let me go in alone. They will listen better if they don’t see you,” said Pixie, and walked undauntedly on to the field of battle. In this instance it was represented by a remarkably handsome and well-filled nursery, and the belligerents took the form of two little girls of four and five, who were seated on the floor, dry-eyed, but crimson-faced from the effort to sustain their shrieks. A box of bricks lay scattered by the window, and an anaemic nurse leant against the wall in an attitude of despair.Pixie walked forward, seated herself on the floor immediately in front of the children, and gazed at them with benign curiosity. There was no anger in her face, no warning of punishment to come, her expression was in such striking contrast with that which they were accustomed to behold on such occasions, that from pure amazement they stopped crying to stare at her in their turn. The moment was hers, and she lost no time in using it.“The fat one,” she said, pointing gravely to the younger of the sisters, “the fat one shouts higher, but the thin one,”—the eloquent finger was turned towards the maid with the golden locks,—“the thin one keeps on longer. You have both won! The prize is that I tell you a story about the Spoopjacks, when they went to fight the Bobityshooties in the Christmas holidays!”Silence. Viva laid her head on one side and considered the project. Inda pouted her lower lip, and burst into the story of her woes.“An’ I was jest finishin’ ze house, and ze chimbleys was getting ready, and she comed against me, an’ I pinched her leg, and she throwed it down, an’ it was all spoiled, an’ the dolls was going to live in it, an’—”“The Spoopjacks live in the lamp-posts. There are seven of them, and they have tin whiskers, and they went to war with the Bobityshooties because they ate all the muffins, and there were none left for tea. So Nicholas Spoopjack bought six rolling-pins and a watering-cart, and melted down his whiskers for guns, and they put on red gaiters and clean pinafores, and marched across the park. The Bobityshooties were resting under the trees, and all the little birds were eating up the muffin crumbs. The Bobityshooties really live in the pantry cupboard, so that was how they found the muffins, but they were spending the day in the country, and Selina Bobityshooty said to her mother—”“Is that in a book?” queried the elder Miss Wallace suddenly. She was an exceedingly precocious young lady, and quick to note the unusual style of the narrative. Sometimes the stories in books were about good little girls with whom she had no sympathy, and even if the heroine were naughty to begin with, she invariably improved at the end, and never, never knocked down her sister’s bricks. The Spoopjacks and Bobityshooties were new acquaintances and promised well, but she wished to be reassured as regards the moral. “Is that written in a book?”“No, it’s out of my head. There are billions and billions of little girls in the world, and not one of them has ever heard what Selina said to her mother. If you will kiss your sister and say you’re sorry, I’ll tell you as a secret. It’s awful exciting!”“All right, I’m sorry, only you pinched me too—go on about Selina!” cried Viva in a breath. She kissed her sister on the cheek, and fat little Inda smiled complacently, and repeated, “Go on ’bout S’lina!”Outside in the passage father and mother looked at each other with sparkling eyes.“My dear, she is worth a fortune to us!” cried Mr Wallace rapturously. “She understands children, and they understand her; the girlies will be as good as gold under her care. I’ll tell Spencer to bring round the carriage and send her home in state, and to-morrow afternoon without fail you must strike a bargain with Mistress Bridgie!”
A butler came to the door, a solemn-looking butler, with a white tie and immaculate black clothes, but he seemed rather stupid for his age, for he asked twice over before he could grasp the fact that Pixie had called in answer to the advertisement, and then stared fixedly at her all the time he was escorting her to the room where the other lady applicants were waiting their turns.
Pixie gasped as she looked round and saw ladies, ladies everywhere, on the row of leather chairs ranged along by the wall, on the sofa, on the two easy-lounges by the fireside,—old ladies, young ladies, middle-aged ladies, elderly ladies, shabby and dressy, fat and thin, but all distinctly past their first youth, and all most obviously French. They gaped at the new-comer, even as the butler had done, and she bowed graciously from side to side, and said, “Bon jour, mesdames!” in her most Parisian manner, then squeezed herself into a little corner by the window and listened entranced to the never-ending stream of conversation.
A room full of Englishwomen would under the circumstances have preserved a depressed and solemn silence, but these good ladies chattered like magpies, with such shruggings of shoulders, such waving of hands, such shrillness of emphasis, that Pixie felt as if she were once more domiciled in the Avenue Gustave.
The lady in the plaid dress, who occupied the next chair, asked her with frank curiosity to recount then how she found herself in such a position, and, being assured that she was indeed applying for the situation, prophesied that it would never march! She turned and whispered loudly to her companion, “Behold her, the poor pigeon! One sees well that she has the white heart!” But the companion was less amiable, and enraged herself because there were already applicants enough, and with each new-comer her own chance of success became less assured.
At intervals of five or ten minutes the butler returned and marshalled the next in order to the presence of the lady of the house, but, short as were the interviews, it was a weary wait before it came to Pixie’s turn, and she wondered fearfully whether Bridgie had taken fright at her absence, and was even now searching the streets in a panic of alarm. The hands of the clock pointed to ten minutes to six before the butler gave the longed-for signal, and she smiled at him in her most friendly manner as she crossed the room towards him. Without any exchange of words she divined that he took more interest in herself than in any of the other applicants, and also that for some mysterious reason he was sorry for her, and imagined that she was making a mistake, and the smile was meant at once as thanks and reassurement.
They walked together down the slippery floor, such a slippery, shiny floor, that one felt as if skates would be almost more in keeping than boots, and finally arrived at a cosy little room at the back of the house, where a tired-looking gentleman and a bored-looking lady stood ready to receive her. They looked at each other, they looked at the butler, they looked again at the little pig-tailed figure, with short skirts and beaming, childlike face, and their faces became blank with astonishment.
“Bon jour, mademoiselle!” began the lady uncertainly.
“Good day to ye!” said Pixie in response, and at that the bewilderment became more marked than ever. The lady sat down and drew a long, weary sigh. She was handsome and young, but very, very thin, and looked as if she had hardly enough energy to go through any more interviews.
“Then—then you are not French after all?”
“I forgot!” sighed Pixie sadly. She sat down and hitched her chair nearer the fire in sociable fashion. “It’s just like me to make up me mind, and then forget at the right moment! I intended to let you hear me speak French, before I broke it to you that I’m Irish and all my people before me.”
“I almost think I should have discovered it for myself!” said the lady, looking as if she were not quite sure whether to be amused or irritated. “But if that is so, what is your business here? I advertised for a French lady.”
“You did. I read the advertisement, but if I’m not French I’m just as good, for I’ve just last month returned from Paris, and the lady where I was staying was most particular about my accent. Over in Ireland I was so quick in picking up the brogue that I had to be sent to England to get rid of it, and I was just as handy with another language. If I’d remembered to answer you in French, you would never have known the difference between me and those old ladies who came in first.”
“Old ladies, indeed! I’ll never advertise again if this is what it means!” sighed the ladysotto voce. She looked across the room, met a gleam of amusement in her husband’s eyes, and said in a tolerant voice, “Well, then, let me hear you now! I am a pretty good French scholar myself, so you won’t find me easy to deceive!”
“Perfectly, madam, perfectly!” cried Pixie, gesticulating assent. She found none of the difficulty in settling what to talk about which handicaps most people under similar circumstances, but poured forth a stream of commonplaces in such fluent, rapid French as showed that she had good reason for boasting of proficiency. When she finished, the lady looked at her husband with a triumphant air, and cried—
“There! It shows how important it is for children to learn a language while they are still young. It can never be mastered so well if it is left until they are grown-up.”
Then turning to Pixie—
“Yes, indeed, you speak French charmingly. I congratulate you, and hope you may find it very useful. You are so young that you cannot have finished your own education. Perhaps you are going to school in England?”
“’Deed I am not. I want to teach instead. My brother is a very grand gentleman, but he’s in difficulties. He has a fine estate in Ireland, but it is let, and he’s over in London trying to make enough money to get back again, and that’s none too easy, as you may know yourself, and if I can earn some money it will keep me from being a burden on me friends. I’ve answered quite a lot of advertisements, but there was nothing really to suit me until I saw your own yesterday morning.”
“I see! May I ask if your mother knows what you are doing—if you are here with her consent?”
Pixie sighed at that, and shook her head in melancholy fashion.
“I’ve no mother. She died when I was young, and the Major’s horse threw him two years ago, and I’ve been an orphan ever since. There’s only Bridgie now!”
“Poor child!” The lady looked at the quaint figure with a kindly glance, thinking of the two little girls upstairs, and picturing them starting out to fight the world when they should still have been safe within the shelter of the schoolroom. “I’m sorry to hear that. Bridgie, I suppose, is your sister? Does she know what you are doing? Would she be willing for you to apply for a situation in this manner?”
“Maybe not at first, but I’d beguile her. I’m the youngest, and I always get my own way. I told Sylvia Trevor, who was staying with us, and she was very kind, giving me good advice not to do it, but it is to be a surprise for Bridgie to help her to pay the bills. If ye want money, what else can you do than try to earn it?”
“But not at your age, dear! You are too young yet awhile!” Mrs Wallace crossed the room and seating herself in a chair by Pixie’s side, laid a hand on her shoulder with quite affectionate pressure. “I appreciate your kindly intention, but I am afraid it will be a good many years before you are ready to take a governess’s place. You saw yourself what a difference there was between yourself and the other ladies who came to see me to-day!”
“I’m more amusing! Ye wouldn’t believe how amusing I can be when I try! At school there was a prize which was given to the girl who was nicest to the other girls, and they all voted for me, and I’ve got it now and could bring it to show you if you liked. I’m not exactly clever, and there was no chance for anyone else at the bottom of the class, but you didn’t say a word about teaching, except French, and I could talk that all day long!”
“Yes! I should be quite satisfied if my girlies spoke as well as you do. Your accent is charming, and you have just the air, but—but you are so young—so ridiculously young!”
“So are the children. They’d like me best!” maintained Pixie sturdily, and at that Mr Wallace burst into a laugh. His eyes had been twinkling for some time past, and he had been stroking his moustache as if to conceal his amusement, but now he made no more disguise, but laughed and laughed again, as if he were thoroughly enjoying himself.
“Upon my word, Edith, I believe she is right! If you consider the children’s feelings, there is no doubt how they would decide. If you want them kept happy and bright, now’s your chance! After our earlier experiences this is really quite refreshing, and I am beginning to think your advertisement has been of some use after all. How would it be if you interviewed Miss Bridgie—I didn’t catch the second name—and if she is agreeable, you might perhaps make some temporary arrangement!”
“O’Shaughnessy. It’s Irish! I’m sure Bridgie would say yes, for it would be occupation for me in the mornings, and so near that I could come by myself. We live in Rutland Road, but the house is so small ye would hardly notice it if you passed by. Jack says if he could get London rents in Ireland, he’d never do another honest day’s work while he lived. You could put the whole place down in the hall at Knock Castle, and never know it was there, and Bridgie says she knows every blade of grass in the garden. We had the loveliest grounds at Knock, all the flowers coming up anyway, and volunteers drilling in the park, and the glass-houses full of ferrets and white mice, and tomatoes, and everything you can think of. If I could make some money we should be able to go back sooner than we thought, and Bridgie would be so pleased. When shall I say you are coming to see her?”
“I have not promised to come at all. You must not leap at conclusions. It is a most ridiculous scheme, but really—”
Mrs Wallace laughed in her turn, and going up to where her husband stood, exchanged a few whispered confidences, some scattered words of which reached the listener’s ear. “Typically Irish! Preposterous! No harm trying. What about Viva? So difficult to manage.”
The discussion was still progressing when from above sounded a sudden piercing cry, mounting ever higher and higher, the note sustained in evident but determined effort. Footsteps raced across the floor, followed by a bang as of some heavy wooden structure, a murmured protest, and two distinct sets of shrieks, each warring against the other.
Mr Wallace pressed his hands to his head, Mrs Wallace sighed, “Oh dear, dear, dear!” in tones of hopeless distress, but Pixie cried eagerly—
“Will I run upstairs and try what I can do? Will I make them stop, and laugh instead?”
“You’d deserve the Victoria Cross!” the father declared, while the mother hurried to the door, and led the way with rapid footsteps.
“They have been brought up by an Indian ayah, and this English nurse doesn’t understand them a bit. Theyhavetrying tempers, there is no use denying it, but they are dear little creaturesifrightly managed. Oh dear, dear, dear! these dreadful shrieks! They go through my head.”
“Let me go in alone. They will listen better if they don’t see you,” said Pixie, and walked undauntedly on to the field of battle. In this instance it was represented by a remarkably handsome and well-filled nursery, and the belligerents took the form of two little girls of four and five, who were seated on the floor, dry-eyed, but crimson-faced from the effort to sustain their shrieks. A box of bricks lay scattered by the window, and an anaemic nurse leant against the wall in an attitude of despair.
Pixie walked forward, seated herself on the floor immediately in front of the children, and gazed at them with benign curiosity. There was no anger in her face, no warning of punishment to come, her expression was in such striking contrast with that which they were accustomed to behold on such occasions, that from pure amazement they stopped crying to stare at her in their turn. The moment was hers, and she lost no time in using it.
“The fat one,” she said, pointing gravely to the younger of the sisters, “the fat one shouts higher, but the thin one,”—the eloquent finger was turned towards the maid with the golden locks,—“the thin one keeps on longer. You have both won! The prize is that I tell you a story about the Spoopjacks, when they went to fight the Bobityshooties in the Christmas holidays!”
Silence. Viva laid her head on one side and considered the project. Inda pouted her lower lip, and burst into the story of her woes.
“An’ I was jest finishin’ ze house, and ze chimbleys was getting ready, and she comed against me, an’ I pinched her leg, and she throwed it down, an’ it was all spoiled, an’ the dolls was going to live in it, an’—”
“The Spoopjacks live in the lamp-posts. There are seven of them, and they have tin whiskers, and they went to war with the Bobityshooties because they ate all the muffins, and there were none left for tea. So Nicholas Spoopjack bought six rolling-pins and a watering-cart, and melted down his whiskers for guns, and they put on red gaiters and clean pinafores, and marched across the park. The Bobityshooties were resting under the trees, and all the little birds were eating up the muffin crumbs. The Bobityshooties really live in the pantry cupboard, so that was how they found the muffins, but they were spending the day in the country, and Selina Bobityshooty said to her mother—”
“Is that in a book?” queried the elder Miss Wallace suddenly. She was an exceedingly precocious young lady, and quick to note the unusual style of the narrative. Sometimes the stories in books were about good little girls with whom she had no sympathy, and even if the heroine were naughty to begin with, she invariably improved at the end, and never, never knocked down her sister’s bricks. The Spoopjacks and Bobityshooties were new acquaintances and promised well, but she wished to be reassured as regards the moral. “Is that written in a book?”
“No, it’s out of my head. There are billions and billions of little girls in the world, and not one of them has ever heard what Selina said to her mother. If you will kiss your sister and say you’re sorry, I’ll tell you as a secret. It’s awful exciting!”
“All right, I’m sorry, only you pinched me too—go on about Selina!” cried Viva in a breath. She kissed her sister on the cheek, and fat little Inda smiled complacently, and repeated, “Go on ’bout S’lina!”
Outside in the passage father and mother looked at each other with sparkling eyes.
“My dear, she is worth a fortune to us!” cried Mr Wallace rapturously. “She understands children, and they understand her; the girlies will be as good as gold under her care. I’ll tell Spencer to bring round the carriage and send her home in state, and to-morrow afternoon without fail you must strike a bargain with Mistress Bridgie!”