"Do you think you could fill it?"
"I know I could, I have been housemaid at home all my life. We never kept any female servant but Dorothy."
There was a moment"s silence, while Miss McPherson seemed to be thinking, and then she said:
"Will you take that place with me?"
"With you?" Bessie repeated, a little bewildered; and her aunt replied:
"Yes, with me. Why not? Better serve me than a stranger. My second girl, Sarah, was married a few weeks ago!--more fool she!--and I have no one as yet in her place. If you will like it, and fill it as well as she did, I will give you what I gave her, two dollars and a half a week, and more if you earn it. What do you say?"
"I will take the place," Bessie answered, unhesitatingly, feeling that, singular as it might seem to serve her aunt, she would rather do that than go to a stranger. "I will take the place, and do the best I can, and if I fail in some things at first, you will tell me what to do. How long will it take to earn two hundred and fifty-five pounds at two dollars and a half a week?"
Miss Betsey must have felt cold again, for she rushed to the open window and shut it with a bang, while for an instant she wavered in her determination. Then, thinking to herself, "I may as well see what stuff she really is made of," she returned to Bessie, who, if she had not been quite so anxious and nervous, would have felt amused at her eccentric behavior.
Without telling how long it would take to earn two hundred and fifty-five pounds at two dollars and a half a week, Miss Betsey said:
"Then it is a bargain, and you are my housemaid really, and willing to do a housemaid"s duties, and take a house maid"s place. Do you understand all that means?"
"I think so," Bessie answered, wondering if she should have to share the cook"s bed.
As if divining her thoughts, her aunt rejoined:
"One exception I shall make in your favor. You will occupy the little room next my own, at the head of the stairs. You can go up there at once if you like, and I will see that your trunks are brought from the station."
"Oh, thank you," Bessie said, and in her eyes there was a look of grat.i.tude which nearly upset Miss McPherson"s resolution again, and did make her open the window as she pa.s.sed it on her way up stairs with Bessie.
Just as the room had been fitted up years ago, when she was expecting the child Bessie, just so it was now when the girl Bessie entered it.
The same single bed with its muslin hangings, the same little bureau, with its pretty toilet-set, now somewhat faded and _pa.s.see_ in style, but showing what it had been, and in a corner the big doll with all its paraphernalia around it.
"Oh, auntie," Bessie cried, as she stepped across the threshold, "what a lovely little room! and it almost looks as if it had been intended for me when I was younger."
"It was meant for you years ago, when I wrote to your father and asked him to give you to me. Fool that I was, I thought he would let you come; but he did not, and so the room has waited."
"I never knew you sent for me," Bessie said, "but father could not have spared me; and oh, auntie, I cannot tell you how it makes me feel to know you have kept me in your mind all these years. Let me kiss you; please," and throwing her arms around her aunt"s neck. Bessie sobbed hysterically for a few moments, while the Stern face bending over her relaxed in its severity, and Miss Betsey"s voice was very kind and soothing, as she said:
"There, there, child; don"t get up a headache. I am glad you like the room; glad you are here. You had better go to bed, and not come down again."
She did not kiss the girl, but she put her hand on her head and smoothed the curly hair, and Bessie felt that it was a benediction. When she was alone she sank upon her knees by the bedside, and burying her face in her hands, prayed earnestly that she might know what was right to do, and be a comfort and help to the woman whose peculiarities she began in part to understand. She was so glad to be there, so glad for the shelter, of a home, that the fact of being a housemaid did not trouble her at all, though she did wonder what Neil would say, and if he would not think it quite as bad as steerage, and wondered, too, if Grey would ever come to see her, and if he would recognize her in her new position.
"It will make no difference with Grey Jerrold what you are," something said to her, and comforted, with this a.s.surance she fell asleep, in her new home.
CHAPTER XI.
MISS McPHERSON"S HOUSEMAID.
Bessie meant to be up with the sun, but she was so tired and the room so quiet, that she slept soundly until awakened by the long clock in the lower hall striking seven.
"This is a bad beginning," she thought, as she made her hasty toilet.
She found her trunks outside her door, and selecting from them her new calico dress, which she had bought just before leaving home, she put it on, together with one of the pretty white ap.r.o.ns which Neil had so detested and Grey had so admired.
"I ought to have a housemaid"s cap," she thought, is she looked at herself in the gla.s.s and tried to smooth and straighten her hair, which would curl around her forehead in spite of all she could do.
A clean collar, with cuffs at her wrists, completed her costume, and it was a very neat, attractive little housemaid which entered the room where Miss McPherson was leisurely finishing her plain breakfast of toast, and tea, and eggs.
"Oh, auntie," Bessie began advancing to her side, "I am so sorry I overslept. I was very tired, and the bed was so nice. It shall not happen again. What can I do for you? Let me make you a fresh slice of toast."
"No, thanks. I am through. You can clear the table if you like," Miss Betsey replied, shoving back her chair and eyeing her niece curiously as she gathered up the dishes and carried them to the kitchen, where she took her own breakfast with the cook, who instructed her in her duties as well as she could.
"She is mighty queer and mighty particular, but if you get the soft side of her you are all right," she said to Bessie, who moved about the house almost as handily as if she had lived there all her life.
Never had the china been washed more carefully or quickly, or the furniture better dusted, or the table better arranged for dinner, and had Bessie been a trained servant from the queen"s household she could not have waited upon her aunt more deftly or respectfully than she did.
But the strain upon her nerves began to tell upon her, and after her dishes were washed, and she was a.s.sured by the cook that there was nothing more for her to do until tea-time, she went to her room for a little rest, just as a carriage dashed up to the door, and the bell rang fiercely. Scarcely, however, had Bessie reached the hall on her way to answer the ring, when her aunt, who, it seemed to her, was everywhere present, darted out from some quarter, and seizing her by the shoulder said, quickly:
"Go back to your room. I"ll let her in myself."
Was she angry, and if so, at what? Bessie wondered, as she returned to her room, and sitting down by the bed laid her tired head upon the pillow, while a few tears rolled down her cheeks as she recalled her aunt"s sharp tones. Was this to be all the commendation she was to receive for the pains she had taken to please? It was hard, and there began to steal over her a feeling of utter hopelessness and homesickness, when suddenly a sound came up to her from the parlor below, which made her start and listen as to something familiar. Surely she had heard that loud, uncultivated voice before, and after a moment it came to her--the tea party in the dear old garden at home when Mrs.
Rossiter-Browne was the guest, and had so disgusted her with her vulgarity. And this was Mrs. Browne, who had come in state to call, and who, after declaring the weather hot enough to kill cattle, and saying that Gusty was in Saratogy, and had had twelve new dresses made to take with her, spoke next of Allen and Lord Hardy, who were in Idaho, or Omaho, or some other _ho_, Mrs. Browne could not remember which. At the mention of Lord Hardy"s name all Bessie"s old life seemed to come back to her, and she lived again through the dreary days at the crowded hotels, and ate her dinner of dry bread and shriveled grapes in the back room of the fourth floor, and saw her mother radiant with smiles bandying jests with the young Irish lord, while her father looked on with a sorry expression on his face, the very memory of which brought a rain of tears to Bessie"s eyes. Allen had just written to his mother a description of his travels, and she was giving Miss McPherson her version of it. Another lord had joined them, she said, a regular English swell, and they attracted so much attention, and the people were so curious to see them, that they were actually obliged to travel in a _cognito_, though what under the sun that was she was sure she didn"t know. She thought she had been in most everything there was goin, but she"d never seen a _cognito_, which must be some Western contrivance or other. At this ludicrous mistake, so characteristic of Mrs.
Rossiter-Browne, Bessie forgot her tears and laughed hysterically until she heard her mother"s name, when she instinctively grew quiet and rigid as a piece of marble, for what Mrs. Browne said was this:
"And so the poor little critter is dead! Well, I must say she was about the prettiest woman I ever saw, but I guess she wasn"t just what I s"posed she was when I took such a shine to her. She was a born flirt, and mebbe couldn"t help it, but she might have let Allen alone--a mere boy. Why, he was that bewitched after her that he fairly lost flesh, and told me to my face that he should never see another woman he liked as he did her, and he"d never got over it neither if Lord Hardy hadn"t taken him in hand and told him something--I"ve no idea what, for Allen would never tell me, only it did the business, and there was no more whimperin" for that woman."
"Oh, mother! poor mother!" Bessie moaned, as she covered her face with her hands, feeling that her shame was greater than she could bear.
Going to the door she closed it, and so did not hear Mrs. Browne when she said next:
"She had a lovely daughter, though, with a face like an angel. I"d swear she was all right. Do you ever hear from her?"
For a moment Miss Betsey hesitated, for it was not a part of her plan to let Mrs. Browne or any one see Bessie just yet; but her love for the _naked truth_ prevailed, and she replied:
"Yes, she is here. She came yesterday in the Germanic. I will call her."
"Crying? What"s that for?" she said to Bessie as she entered the room, and feeling almost as guilty as if she had been caught in some wrong act, Bessie sobbed: "The door was open at first, and I knew it was Mrs.
Rossiter-Browne, whom I have seen at Stoneleigh. I heard what she said of mamma, and oh, auntie, I am her daughter, and she is dead, and she _was_ good at the last!"
In her sympathy for Bessie, Miss McPherson was even ready to do battle for Daisy, and she replied:
"Mrs. Browne is a fool, and Allen is a bigger one, and Lord Hardy biggest of all. Don"t cry. She wants to see you. Wash your face, and take off your ap.r.o.n and come down."
Five minutes later Bessie was shaking hands with Mrs. Browne, who told her "she did not look very stubbed, that was a fact--that she guessed seasickness had not agreed with her, and she"d better keep herself swaddled up in flannel for a spell till she got used to the climate, which was not like England."
"You come in the Germanic, your aunt tells me," she continued, as Bessie took a seat beside her. "Then you must have seen Miss Lucy Grey and her nephew, for they were on that ship, and I hear were met by somebody sent from Boston to tell "em to come right on, for Miss Jerrold was very sick."
Bessie felt rather than saw the questioning eyes which her aunt flashed upon her, and her face was scarlet as she answered: