"She is sure to have friends in the town. We"ll let her visit them often."
"If she dares to come into your room, mother!"
"Mind this, every one of you, servant or no servant, I fold all the linen mysel."
"She shall not get cleaning out the east room."
"Nor putting my chest of drawers in order."
"Nor tidying up my ma.n.u.scripts."
"I hope she"s a reader, though. You could set her down with a book, and then close the door canny on her."
And so on. Was ever servant awaited so apprehensively? And then she came-at an anxious time, too, when her worth could be put to the proof at once-and from first to last she was a treasure. I know not what we should have done without her.
CHAPTER IX-MY HEROINE.
When it was known that I had begun another story my mother might ask what it was to be about this time.
"Fine we can guess who it is about," my sister would say pointedly.
"Maybe you can guess, but it is beyond me," says my mother, with the meekness of one who knows that she is a dull person.
My sister scorned her at such times. "What woman is in all his books?"
she would demand.
"I"m sure I canna say," replies my mother determinedly. "I thought the women were different every time."
"Mother, I wonder you can be so audacious! Fine you know what woman I mean."
"How can I know? What woman is it? You should bear in mind that I hinna your cleverness" (they were constantly giving each other little knocks).
"I won"t give you the satisfaction of saying her name. But this I will say, it is high time he was keeping her out of his books."
And then as usual my mother would give herself away unconsciously. "That is what I tell him," she says chuckling, "and he tries to keep me out, but he canna; it"s more than he can do!"
On an evening after my mother had gone to bed, the first chapter would be brought upstairs, and I read, sitting at the foot of the bed, while my sister watched to make my mother behave herself, and my father cried H"sh! when there were interruptions. All would go well at the start, the reflections were accepted with a little nod of the head, the descriptions of scenery as ruts on the road that must be got over at a walking pace (my mother did not care for scenery, and that is why there is so little of it in my books). But now I am reading too quickly, a little apprehensively, because I know that the next paragraph begins with-let us say with, "Along this path came a woman": I had intended to rush on here in a loud bullying voice, but "Along this path came a woman" I read, and stop. Did I hear a faint sound from the other end of the bed? Perhaps I did not; I may only have been listening for it, but I falter and look up.
My sister and I look sternly at my mother. She bites her under-lip and clutches the bed with both hands, really she is doing her best for me, but first comes a smothered gurgling sound, then her hold on herself relaxes and she shakes with mirth.
"That"s a way to behave!" cries my sister.
"I cannot help it," my mother gasps.
"And there"s nothing to laugh at."
"It"s that woman," my mother explains unnecessarily.
"Maybe she"s not the woman you think her," I say, crushed.
"Maybe not," says my mother doubtfully. "What was her name?"
"Her name," I answer with triumph, "was not Margaret"; but this makes her ripple again. "I have so many names nowadays," she mutters.
"H"sh!" says my father, and the reading is resumed.
Perhaps the woman who came along the path was of tall and majestic figure, which should have shown my mother that I had contrived to start my train without her this time. But it did not.
"What are you laughing at now?" says my sister severely. "Do you not hear that she was a tall, majestic woman?"
"It"s the first time I ever heard it said of her," replies my mother.
"But she is."
"Ke fy, havers!"
"The book says it."
"There will be a many queer things in the book. What was she wearing?"
I have not described her clothes. "That"s a mistake," says my mother.
"When I come upon a woman in a book, the first thing I want to know about her is whether she was good-looking, and the second, how she was put on."
The woman on the path was eighteen years of age, and of remarkable beauty.
"That settles you," says my sister.
"I was no beauty at eighteen," my mother admits, but here my father interferes unexpectedly. "There wasna your like in this countryside at eighteen," says he stoutly.
"Pooh!" says she, well pleased.
"Were you plain, then?" we ask.
"Sal," she replies briskly, "I was far from plain."
"H"sh!"
Perhaps in the next chapter this lady (or another) appears in a carriage.
"I a.s.sure you we"re mounting in the world," I hear my mother murmur, but I hurry on without looking up. The lady lives in a house where there are footmen-but the footmen have come on the scene too hurriedly. "This is more than I can stand," gasps my mother, and just as she is getting the better of a fit of laughter, "Footman, give me a drink of water," she cries, and this sets her off again. Often the readings had to end abruptly because her mirth brought on violent fits of coughing.
Sometimes I read to my sister alone, and she a.s.sured me that she could not see my mother among the women this time. This she said to humour me.
Presently she would slip upstairs to announce triumphantly, "You are in again!"
Or in the small hours I might make a confidant of my father, and when I had finished reading he would say thoughtfully, "That la.s.sie is very natural. Some of the ways you say she had-your mother had them just the same. Did you ever notice what an extraordinary woman your mother is?"