Chapter Nine.
Three Sisters Consult Together.
Meanwhile, at the old rectory at Harroway, the girls who were left behind were passing a day not without a certain interest. It was Nina who began all the excitement. Their father, having been disappointed at not seeing Brenda off, had gone early on a long round of parochial visits, and the three girls had the breakfast table to themselves.
Josephine insisted on pouring out tea. Fanchon quarrelled with her over this privilege and managed, in the dispute, to spill the contents of the milk jug. Nina sat quiet and thoughtful, making up a little plan in her small brain. She was really a very precocious child for her ten years.
“First come, first served!” cried Josephine in her somewhat rasping voice. “I was down first, and I took possession of the tea tray. If you don’t behave yourself, Fanchon, I shall put so much water in your tea that you won’t be able to drink it. See what a horrid mess you have made! Nina—get up and ring the bell this minute.”
“No, I won’t,” said Nina. “Get up and ring it yourself.”
“Well—how horrid!” cried Josephine, who knew that if she left her coveted post of tea-maker, it would be immediately secured by Fanchon. “I suppose we must stand this mess, and there’s only a little milk in the other jug.”
“You’re quite detestable!” said Fanchon, snapping her fingers with passion. “What a mercy it is that dear Brenda is with us on other days, or what a frightful mess we’d get into!”
“Dear Brenda, indeed!” cried Nina, in a scornful tone.
“Yes, you do make a fuss about her at times,” said Josephine. “But she is gone for a day—and a good thing, too. You know how cross you are often with her dictatorial ways and the silly manner in which she manages to take in poor papa.”
“I know something that you don’t know,” said Fanchon, resigning herself as passively as she could to a humble seat at the side of the breakfast table.
“What do you know, Fanchon? Oh, do tell us!” cried Nina.
“Well—I saw the dress last night!”
“What—the dress that Brenda went away in?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t see it—she positively refused to let any of us look at it—and I thought it so beastly churlish of her!” said Nina.
“Well, she showed it to me,” said Fanchon carelessly, helping herself to a piece of bread and jam as she spoke, “and it was—oh, I tell you, girls, it was just ripping! I never saw such a beautiful creature as Brenda looked in it. I will describe it to you presently, outside in the garden, but not now. When I have a bit of fun, and a secret to tell, I like to make as much of it as possible. I suppose we’ll have a good time ourselves some day, although not at present.”
“I have something to talk about too in the garden,” said Nina; “but first I want to have a little chat with papa.”
She looked very mysterious and the other girls glanced at her, not particularly, however, troubling themselves with regard to her appearance. It was Nina’s rôle to be sometimes the mere baby—the most kittenish, babyish thing on earth—and at other times to be inscrutable like the Sphinx. But these things did not really matter to her sisters, who, as they expressed it, saw through her little games. On this occasion, she suddenly darted from her seat and ran out of the room. She had caught sight of the somewhat greasy coat of the Reverend Josiah, who had returned unexpectedly and was passing the window on his way to his study.
“There’s papa!” screamed Nina—“the very man I want. I’ll be back by-and-by.”
“What can she be up to now? Little minx!” said Fanchon. “Dear, dear! do you like those pink muslins, Josie? I can’t say that I do.”
“I don’t think about them,” said Josephine. “Whatever we wear, we look frights.”
“Well, sometimes—sometimes I think that dear Brenda rather likes us to look frights,” said Fanchon. “I ought not to say it, for she really has been very good to me—particularly last night—and I believe our best policy at present is to humour her up to the top of her bent. Then if she could get engaged, and were married—”
“Engaged! and married!” cried Josephine. “What do you mean, Fanchon?”
“Well—that is what she expects. There’s a he somewhere in the world who seems to want her, and she thinks he’ll be at Marshlands-on-the-Sea, and—and—it will be fun to watch them together. Little Nina shall creep into the bushes behind them in the evening and listen to what they are saying—what a joke that’ll be!”
“Yes, of course,” said Josephine, brightening up very much, “it’ll tell us the sort of thing that goes on and prepare us for our own turns,” she added.
Fanchon laughed.
“Girls like us sometimes have no turns,” she continued, “that’s the worst of it. Red hair and freckles are so hopeless—you can never dress up to them; everything depends on how you dress, and somehow, it can’t be done—at least, that is what Brenda says.”
“Would you really be glad if Brenda were to leave us?” asked Josephine.
“I think I should—I should be mistress here then, and of course papa, who is so devoted to her, would give her a good wedding and that would be sport—and we’d have to have nice frocks for that, and that would be sport too!”
“Oh, yes—on the whole it would be nice for Brenda to go, only some one else horrid might take her place.”
“Well, don’t let’s sit here any longer in this choking hot room. Let us go into the garden: we have no lessons of any sort to-day. We can get out the frills of our muslins and continue hemming them.”
“I do wonder what is keeping Nina,” said Josephine. But Nina herself had forgotten her sisters, so great was the interest of this important occasion. To begin with—she had caught dear papa. She took dear papa by the button-hole and, slipping her hand through his arm, led him into his study. The Reverend Josiah was very hot, and the study was cool. Nina was well aware which was dearest papa’s most comfortable chair, and she placed him in it, put a pillow to his head and brought him some cold water to drink, and then sat down by him without talking.
She had a little shock head of very carroty hair. That hair neither waved nor curled. It stood in stubborn awkwardness round her small face; for it was thick and short and decidedly jagged. Her face was pale, except for its freckles, and her features had the appearance of being put on by the wide palm of a very flat hand. Her eyes were minute, and she was nearly destitute of eyelashes and eyebrows. Her mouth was a little slit without much colour, but, notwithstanding her decided plainness, there was a great deal of knowingness in Nina, and she might be as dangerous a woman by-and-by as was pretty Brenda herself at the present moment.
“Father,”—she said now—“why did you come back? I thought you were going out for the whole livelong day.”
“So I did, my dear; but I had not gone a mile before I discovered that Bess had cast a shoe and I was obliged to take her to the forge to be put right. The day is uncommonly hot, and I doubt if I shall begin to call on my parishioners until the evening.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you, papa darling,” said Nina. “The parishioners don’t care to be bothered in the morning—do they, papa?”
“That is not the question, my dear,” said the Reverend Josiah. “A clergyman’s visits ought not to be spoken of as bothers. The people ought to be truly glad to have spiritual ministrations offered to them.”
“I do not understand what that means,” said Nina, patting the devoted Josiah’s decidedly fat leg. “But I do know that, if I were cooking dinner, or gardening, or any of the sort of things that poor folks do, I would be frightfully flustered if you came to see me; and I suppose, papa, what I feel, the parishioners feel.”
“No, they don’t. They hold me in much too great respect,” said Mr Amberley, looking with some displeasure at his little daughter.
“Well—p’r’aps so,” said Nina, who really didn’t care a pin about the parishioners, and whose object in sitting with her father at that moment was not concerned in the very least with them. “Papa,” she said, after a pause, “I thought when I saw you passing the window how glad you would be to have your little Nina with you.”
“And so I am, child—so I am. You are having a holiday to-day on account of—of Miss Carlton’s being away—Brenda, I mean. You must miss her terribly, my dear.”
“Oh, no, papa—I don’t miss her at all.”
“Nina—I am shocked to hear you speak in that tone! When I consider the expense I go to, to give you the luxury of such an excellent governess—such a friend—such a companion, I am amazed at your remarks!”
“Oh, well,”—said Nina, who did not wish to speak against Miss Carlton, for that would not do at present—“a holiday is a change to any girl, and we’re going to sit out in the garden and hem the flounces of those little cheap frocks you gave us to wear at the seaside.”
“What little cheap frocks, my dear? I am not aware that I gave you any frocks.”
“But that precious Brenda bought them for us out of your money.”
“Oh, you mean your nice cottons that you are to wear at Marshlands-on-the-Sea. Well, child, I did the best I could, and I think it is unkind of you to talk to me about cheap frocks; for when I allowed the sum of three pounds for each of my daughters, I could not afford more. It was a great, great deal of money, Nina, and so you will find yourself when you come to earn it.” Nina had just got the information she desired. But all she said was—raising solemn eyes to her father’s face:
“The frocks are cheap—they cost sixpence three farthings a yard!”
Mr Amberley got up impatiently.
“I have got to study a passage from Josephus,” he said, “which has puzzled me for some little time; and I don’t care a penny piece whether your frocks cost six-and-sixpence or sixpence halfpenny a yard. I don’t know what a yard means. Leave me now, Nina. I am quite cool, and shall set to work to write a specially good sermon for Sunday. The parishioners want a new sermon, for I have given them the old ones for over a year and I am in the mood to-day. Dear Brenda sometimes helps me with my sermons, but of late I have not found her amenable in that respect. She has a most lively imagination and often throws a fresh light on a text which I myself do not perceive. But go away and hem your frills, and be thankful that you have a good father who can allow you a nice sum each to buy clothes, and an excellent—most excellent governess, who devotes herself to you.”
“She will be home at twelve to-night: are you going to sit up for her?” said Nina.
“Of course I am—poor girl. Do you think I wouldn’t do what I could to show how I appreciate her—how we all appreciate her? I am going to make her a Welsh rabbit for her supper: it is the one dainty that I can make to perfection.”
“Oh, papa!” said Nina, bursting out laughing; “I don’t believe there’s a scrap of cheese in the house!”
The Reverend Josiah made no response to this, but a slightly knowing expression crossed his sandy face, and Nina had to leave him. In truth, she did not want to stay any longer, for she had got the information she desired.
The rectory at Harroway was by no means well furnished. It was a large, rambling old house. What carpets there were bore traces of wear and tear. The sofas were covered with untidy and torn chintzes. The landings had many of them bare boards destitute of any covering whatsoever; the bedrooms were en suite with the rest of the house. But the garden, neglected as it was, was nevertheless a source of unfailing delight. It was an old garden, and had once been dearly loved and carefully tended by a rector who cared more for his flowers than for the souls committed to his care. In his day, roses had bloomed to perfection in this old-world garden, and all sorts of plants and flowers and shrubs had adorned the alleys and had cast their shade over the walks.
This was some time ago, and the Reverend Josiah only employed a man once a week to give the garden just a sort of outside semblance of order. Nevertheless, Nature did not quite forsake the old spot. The unpruned roses still threw out luxuriant blossom, and the shrubs still bloomed and every sort of perennial flower—poppies, sweet peas, jasmine, mignonette sowed themselves and blossomed again and yet again.
Now, the children cared nothing about flowers; they regarded them as little better than weeds, for anything that could be secured without money was to them simply worthless. Neither did they care for pets. There was no dog, nor even a cat, at the rectory. But they liked to sit under the shade of the old trees and, in particular, to invade the summerhouse, which stood back in deepest shade at the far corner of the grounds.
Here, on this hot day, Nina found her two sisters with their pink muslin frills in a cloud about them, while they themselves were bending over the work. Nina appeared, severely armed with a pencil and paper. “Now,”—she said—“here I am.”
“Well, that is very evident,” remarked Fanchon. “Why don’t you sit down and do some work?” said Josephine.
“My frock hasn’t got any flounces.”
“Oh—how you will harp on that tiresome theme again!”
“I won’t—at least not for much longer,” remarked the tiresome child; “but I’ve got something to say—I mean to do a little sum.”
“A sum!—you?”
“Yes—and if I am wrong, Fanchon can help me—or you can, Josephine.”
“Not I,” said Josephine, “my head aches too badly.”
“Well, well,” said Nina, “let’s begin—I know you will help me when I ask you. We were all with Brenda, were we not, when she bought the pink muslins?”
“Why, of course we were, you stupid,” said Fanchon. “Pass me that reel of cotton, please, Josephine.” Josephine did so. Nina placed herself on a low stool and put her sheet of paper and pencil cosily on her knee.
“I know exactly,” she said, “how much muslin was bought: five yards for me, because I was not to have flounces; and seven yards for Josephine and eight yards for you, Fanchon, because you are the tallest.”
“Well, yes—I suppose that is all right,” said Fanchon; but she began, as she said afterwards, to see some method in her sister’s present madness.
“Now,” continued Nina, “I want to cast up a sum. Five—and seven—and eight. Fanchon, do tell me how much five and seven and eight make.”
“Twenty,” was Fanchon’s immediate reply. “Dear, dear! now I can’t find my thimble!”
“Oh, Fanchon—it’s rolled away into that corner.”
“Pick it up, Nina.”
“No,” said Nina—“not yet. How much, please, does twenty yards of muslin, at sixpence halfpenny a yard, come to?”
The sum was made up by Fanchon, who was quite quick at arithmetic.
“Ten shillings and ten-pence,” she replied.
“Yes, I thought so—and there were no linings of any kind got; for dear Brenda said that we could use up some of the frocks we had outgrown, for that purpose. So our three muslin frocks cost exactly ten shillings and ten-pence. It doesn’t seem much for three girls, does it, Fanchon?”
“I don’t know,” said Fanchon, crossly. “Why will you bother us in this queer way, Nina?”
“Well—I am thinking,” said Nina; “you will see my meaning after a bit. After Brenda had got the frocks and paid for them—only she did it so quickly, I can’t make out how much money she put down—she bought the hats. The hats untrimmed were one shilling each, she bought a yard of white muslin to trim each and the white muslin was eight-pence a yard. She grumbled at the price. Three times eight is—”
“Oh—two shillings, two shillings!” said Josephine.
“Well, yes—that is quite right,” said Nina. “Our three hats, trimmed, came to five shillings. Add five shillings to ten and ten-pence—that makes fifteen and ten-pence. Then there were our sand shoes—one and eleven-pence each—they came to five and nine-pence; and our gloves;—white washing gloves—don’t you remember what a fuss Brenda made about them, and said that she would wash them herself for us at night, so that they would be clean every day? and I know they were only sixpence. Now then—let us count up the whole sum.”
The other two girls were now immensely interested. They did count the sum, doing it wrong once or twice, but finally producing a total which could not be gainsaid, and which came out precisely at one pound, three shillings, and a penny. Nina’s little white face was flushed when this great task had been accomplished.
“Can you remember any other single thing?” she asked of her sisters.
“No, there was nothing else,” said Josephine.
“And did Brenda say, or did she not, that she had spent a lot of money on us, and that we must do with it, whether we liked it or not, because there was not a farthing more that could be produced?”
“Well, yes, she did,” said Fanchon, “and it seemed a lot at the time—at least, I thought so.”
Nina rose solemnly now from her little stool. “Girls,”—she said—“I have something to say to you. I have found Brenda out. She spent one pound—three shillings—and one penny—on us, and do you know how much money father gave her to spend upon us?”
“No,” said Fanchon.
“No,” echoed Josephine. “What do you mean, Nina? you extraordinary child!”
“Well—he told me this morning quite simply; I didn’t ask him, he just mentioned it. You won’t guess—it is really awful—it will put you out—it gives me a sort of lumpy, throaty feeling. He gave Brenda nine pounds! three pounds for each of us! and she must have kept back—oh, I can’t make it out—it makes my head turn round—she must have bought her own lovely blue silk, and all her own lovely clothes out of our money! Oh dear! oh dear! I wouldn’t have thought it of her. And to think that I am not even to have frills to my muslin frock!”
“And to think that the frocks must be pink for us!” said Fanchon. “Oh, I can’t believe it.”
“It is true, though,” said Josephine. “She has kept back—oh dear, oh dear—how much is it? I wonder!”
Again three puzzled heads bent over the piece of paper, and at last the full enormity of the beloved Brenda’s conduct was revealed to the children. She had, of their money—yes, their own money—given to them by their own father—seven pounds, sixteen shillings, and eleven-pence to account for!
“We might have been dressed like duchesses,” said Nina. She burst out crying. “Oh—this horrid frock!” she said, and she kicked the offending pink muslin to the opposite side of the summerhouse. “I’ll never wear it—that I won’t!” she cried. “I’ll disgrace her, that I will—horrid thief of a thing!”
As to Fanchon—she walked deliberately out of the summerhouse. With steady steps this young lady, who was very wise for her years, approached her father’s study. The Reverend Josiah was supposed to be busy with his sermon. At such times, it was considered exceedingly ill-advised to molest him. Brenda would never do it. She said that all muses ought to be respected—the sacred muse most of all. But there was no respect in Fanchon’s heart just then. She opened the door with violence and—alas!—it must be owned—aroused Josiah out of a profound sleep. His head had been bent down on the historic pages of old Josephus, and sweet slumber had there visited him.
He started up angrily when detected in his nap by his eldest daughter. He would have forgiven Brenda, but Fanchon had not at all charming ways.
“My dear,” he said, “you know when I am busy with my sermon that I will not be disturbed.”
“Yes, papa—of course, papa,” said Fanchon. “I just wanted to ask you a question, and I will go away again. How much money do you give Brenda every year to spend on clothes for us?”
“What a funny question to ask me, my dear. I have no stated sum; I give just what I can afford.”
“And are you satisfied with the way your daughters are clothed, papa?” said Fanchon, kicking out a long leg as she spoke and showing an untidily shod and very large foot.
“Oh, my dear—my dear! I know nothing about ladies’ dress. I can’t afford silk—I wish I could; I should love to see you in silk; but in my present state, and with my poor stipend, it has to be cotton. I told dear Brenda so, and she agreed with me. Cotton in summer, and a sort of thick stuff—I think they call it linsey-woolsey, but I am not sure—for the cold days. I cannot do better, Fanchon—there is no use in your scolding me.”
“I am not scolding you, papa. You gave Brenda three pounds for each of us—didn’t you—the other day, to get our things for the seaside?”
“Yes, of course I did: that was the very least she said she could possibly have. I gave it to her with her own quarter’s salary, which the dear girl required a fortnight in advance; there was nothing in that. Her quarter’s salary was seven pounds ten, and the money for you three—nine pounds. Brenda said it was very little, but it really seemed a great lot to me, and I regret it when I think of my poor parishioners. But there’s nothing cheaper than cotton—at least, I have never heard of it; of course, if there were, it would be my duty to clothe you in it.”
“Did you ever hear of art muslin, papa?” asked Fanchon. “That is cheaper, but I won’t disturb you any more.” She went up to him and gave him a kiss. Then she left the room.
Having obtained her information, Fanchon went deliberately into the filbert walk. There she paced about for some time, her eyes fixed on the ground, her hands locked tightly together in front of her. She was not exactly depressed, but she was troubled. She was old enough to see the advantage of the revelation being arrived at which little Nina had so cleverly accomplished, and she was determined to make it in every way available for her own purposes. But to do this, she must put her sisters off the scent. At dinner time, she ate a very scanty meal. She hardly spoke to them, but, after dinner, she had a long conference with them both.
“Now, look here, Nina,” she said.
“Yes,” said Nina.
“I want you to make me a promise.”
“Oh, I do hate promises,” said Nina.
“I don’t,” said Josephine, “they’re rather interesting; nothing cheerful ever comes in our way, and even to make a promise seems better than nothing.”
“Well, the promise I want you two to make to me is this: that you won’t breathe a word of what I have said to you, either to father or Brenda—that you will keep it entirely to yourselves and allow me to manage Miss Brenda. I think I can promise that if you do this you will both have rather pretty frocks at the seaside, and that Nina shall have her flounces. Go on finishing the pink muslins, girls, for they’ll be a help, and certainly better than nothing, and let me approach Brenda to-morrow morning.”
“Oh dear!” said Nina, “how clever you are! I am sure I, for my part, will be only too delighted. But how dare you?” she added. “Does it mean that you would go—and—put her in prison?”
“I put her in prison—you little goose! What do you mean? No, no! But she’ll buy our clothes for us out of father’s own money or—there! don’t let’s talk any more about it.”
Josephine hesitated for a moment, then she flew to her sister’s side, flung her arms round her neck, and kissed her heartily.
“I think we ought to be awfully pleased with Nina,” was Fanchon’s response, “for she’s quite a little brick, and I tell you what it is, girls—we’ll go and pick some fruit for tea and I shall send Molly for two-pennyworth of cream to eat with it; we may as well enjoy ourselves. Brenda has left a few pence with me in case of necessities. She warned me to be awfully careful, but I think she won’t scold us much about the cream when I have said a few things to her I mean to say.”
“Mightn’t we have some currant buns?” said Nina. “I was so hungry at lunch—there didn’t seem to be a scrap of meat on that bone.”
“Yes—we’ll have currant buns, too. She left me eleven-pence. You can run to the village, Nina, if you like, and get the buns. Mrs Simpson must have them out of the oven by now.”
Off scampered Nina. Josephine and Fanchon had a little further conversation, and, by the time Nina returned, the whole matter with regard to Brenda and her shortcoming: was left in the elder sister’s hands.