"We"re going to keep a cow, Jimmie!" I said, rapturously.
"Well, don"t gurgle about it. You act as if keeping a cow put the stamp of the Four Hundred on you. Did Mary say you might?"
"Mary has given her consent," said Aubrey. "But I"m wondering how that old woman will behave with other servants. Of course she was all right while there was no one else and she was boss of the ranch, but we must have two or three now at Peach Orchard, and she is so jealous, I wonder if she will let us live with her!"
Well might we have wondered. Trouble began the very next day. As we went out on the train I noticed that Mary had on her best dress and hat. She had no bag with her, so I wondered how she meant to "settle"
in such clothes. The Angel and I had on our worst.
I comforted myself with the reflection that there would not be very much dirty work to do. This would in reality be a kid-glove moving, for Mr. Close had telephoned the day before that everything was ready for us to move in. I had even sent a cleaning woman for floors and windows.
I had taken the precaution to bring a few silver knives, forks, and spoons in my bag. Then as we got off the train I stopped at a grocery and bought a loaf of bread, a tin of devilled ham, one of sardines, some b.u.t.ter, and a dozen eggs, so we were at least sure of our luncheon.
We jumped out of the carriage almost before it had stopped, and, while Aubrey paid the man, I ran up the steps and into the house.
Such a sight of confusion met my eyes! The old paper was piled in the middle of each floor, and not a new strip on any wall. One ceiling only in the whole house was finished. Not a hardwood floor had been laid. The lumber was piled in the hall. Not a chandelier was up. The ragged wires projected from their various holes in ceilings and walls.
Where was my cleaning woman? Where were our workmen? Above all, where was the perfidious Mr. Close?
There was no furnace fire, and the water was not turned on. I ran back and Aubrey shouted for the carriage, just turning out of the grounds, to come back.
"Go to the plumbers!" I said, incoherently, "and to the electric light men, and to the agents, and see where the men are, and bring some brooms and buckets and send me a grocer"s boy."
He turned away, breathing vengeance. I felt sorry for Mr. Close.
"And to the telephone company!" I cried, after the departing carriage.
"And to--" but the driver lashed his horses, and I had to give up.
I went back to Mary in her best dress.
"Finished, is it?" she said, sniffing with indignation. "I suppose the agent thought we were flies, and could move in on the ceiling--as that"s the only thing I can see about the house that"s finished!"
"Wait until Mr. Jardine sees the agent!" I said, ominously. "Then something else will be finished, besides the ceiling."
"I hope he"ll kill him!" said Mary, pleasantly.
It was a real pleasure to witness the dismay in Mr. Close"s face when Aubrey returned, bringing him, mentally, by the scruff of the neck. I have seen terriers yanked back to look at things they have "worried" in much the same manner that Mr. Close was fetched to Peach Orchard.
"Just look, Mr. Close, if you please," I said, ominously polite. "You telephoned me yesterday and said you had been here personally and seen with your own eyes that everything was finished and the house in perfect readiness for us to move in."
Mr. Close refused to meet my accusing eye. He turned green.
There are more ways than one of calling a man a liar. And some are safer than others.
"Did you really have the smoke test put through the plumbing as you said you did?" I asked.
Mr. Close eagerly produced the bill.
Plumber"s bills are conclusive evidence.
"Did you have the range cleaned and the water-back examined?" demanded Aubrey.
Mr. Close swore that he did. Aubrey led him captive around the house and showed him the confusion thereof, Mary grimly following. I think Close preferred Aubrey to me, and me or anybody to Mary, for Mary"s very spectacles were bristling with anger. She could see herself, in her best dress, having to clean up that mess so that the furniture could be moved in.
Then Aubrey"s men began to arrive. The man with the chandeliers. The carpenters to lay the floors. The man from the water office. My negro cleaning woman and the grocer"s boy. Fortunately, the cleaning woman had brought a broom, a mop, and a bucket.
As there were no fires, Aubrey and Mr. Close made one in the furnace; Mary and the grocer"s boy--or rather the grocer"s boy under Mary"s direction--built one in the range, while I set the woman to sweeping one floor for the carpenters to begin on.
Suddenly I heard hurried feet running up the cellar stairs. The water man had turned the water on from the street, and it was gaily pouring into the cellar. Mr. Close is a fat man, but he ran like a jack-rabbit to that water main, and shut it off. Then without daring to face--Mary, he started to town for a plumber.
He had not been gone half an hour when the water-back blew up.
Fortunately, no one was in the kitchen at the time, but the cleaning woman turned from black to a dirty gray with fright, and without further ado went home. I can"t say that I blamed her. Aubrey was busy putting out the furnace fire and bailing out the cellar, so he did not know of that defection.
However, a culmination of such calamities, instead of smiting me to the earth, aroused every drop of fighting blood in my whole body.
I went out on the porch to think it over, and as I thought I began to laugh. I laughed until Aubrey heard me and thought I was crying. He came hurrying out, with a face full of anxiety, saying, before he saw me:
"Never mind, dear! I know this is hard on you, but--"
"Well, I"ll be--!"
Both of those remarks were Aubrey"s. He was much relieved, however, to discover that I was not cast down by all these disasters. In fact, our moving partook more of the delights of camping out than orthodox housekeeping, and I soon discovered expedients.
The only fire which did not bid fair to blow our heads off was one in the grate in the hall. On this we boiled water and made tea, and for that first luncheon we satisfied ourselves with sardines and devilled ham sandwiches. But as we were obliged to cook on that grate for six days, I may as well record now that we grew into expert cooks, attempting eggs in all forms, batter-cakes, hoe cakes, fried mush, bacon, ham, chops, toast, and fried potatoes,--in fact, no woman knows how much she can cook on a common little hard coal grate until three hungry people are dependent on it for three meals a day.
We supplemented this by the chafing-dish. Aubrey says that I should say the grate fire supplemented the chafing-dish, for n.o.body knows what can be done with one--in real, urgent housekeeping, I mean, such as ours, until one has tried. It makes a perfect double boiler, and as for a _bain Marie_, well, I used to cream potatoes in the top part, and when they were all done but the simmering of the cream to thicken it, I used to put tomatoes in the bottom part to stew, and put the potato part back on the tomatoes for a cover and to keep hot. Did you ever try that?
The kitchen range was discovered to be ruined, the pipes being completely full and solid with rust. It is a miracle that some of us were not killed by the explosion. Mary cheerfully declared her regret that Mr. Close had not been bending over the stove with his lie in his throat when the water-back remonstrated. Mary is quite firm in her ideas of making "the punishment fit the crime--the punishment fit the crime."
But we enjoyed it--that is, Aubrey and I enjoyed it. Mary wanted us to go to an hotel and stay until things were in order, and send the bill to Mr. Close. But even though her suggestion was made at two o"clock in the afternoon and no vans had yet appeared, I was firm in my decision to sleep in Peach Orchard that night.
My courage had in the meantime been buoyed up by the fact that the telephone had been put in, and my friend, the grocer"s boy, had brought me reinforcements in the shape of plates, tumblers, pots, pans, brooms, buckets, and supplies, and had further completed my rapture by promising me a kitten.
About three o"clock, I, as lookout, descried the big red vans, each drawn by four horses, at the foot of the hill.
Now Clovertown is not full of hills, rather it consists of hills. It is not quite as bad as Mt. St. Michel, for that is all one, but Clovertown consists of a series of small Mt. St. Michels, equally steep, precipitous, and appalling to climb, also equally lovely and bewitching when once you have climbed.
The moving men seemed to realize their steepness, for they put all eight of the horses to one van and bravely started up the hill. But alas, they were New York horses, and only capable of dodging elevated pillars and of keeping their footing on icy asphalt. They were not used to climbing trees, as we afterward discovered Clovertown horses to be quite capable of doing. So, after straining and pulling and being cruelly urged to a feat beyond their strength, we had our first taste of the neighbourliness of the people on the next estate. Their head man, called familiarly Eddie Bannon, came to our rescue.
"Take all them horses off," he said, "and I"ll pull you up the hill with my team of blacks."
We were grateful, but politely incredulous. What! One pair of horses accomplish a feat which eight had been unable to do.
I grew feverishly excited in watching the exchange. It was a picture to see the incredulity on the countenances of the van men. They tried not to show it, for that would have been impolite, but Eddie Bannon saw it, and grinned at their unbelief.
When the blacks were in the traces, Bannon took the reins. One of the men offered him a long wicked-looking whip, but he spurned it.
"No," he said, "if the blacks won"t pull for love, they won"t for a beating."
So then he spoke to them. Willing hands started the wheels. The gallant little blacks, looking like a pair of ponies before the huge van, seemed to lie flat on their bellies as they strained forward, digging their sharp little hoofs into the hillside. The van gave an inch--two! A foot! Then urged by their master"s voice, and for very pride of home and race and breed, the gallant blacks pulled for dear life, and in a quarter of an hour the van was at our door, and they were switching their tails and stamping their hoofs and shaking their intelligent heads in the pride of victory.