CHAPTER III.
he hot July days brought us such good news from Cannes that our hearts were all light with the hope of soon welcoming our parents back, and Cecilly was especially happy at being promised several more pupils after the summer holidays were over. Mrs. Moore, the old lady to whom I read, had hinted that she might require more of my time in the autumn, so we had every reason to be light-hearted and to forget the hardness of our work with so much to be thankful for. Only poor old Jack looked graver as the days went by, and my heart ached for him with his secret trouble.
It was nearly the end of July that one morning Cynthia came tapping at the kitchen door, where I was surrounded with materials for dinner.
“Where is Cecilly?” she asked, and on my telling her Cecilly was out, giving music lessons, she told me she had tickets for a concert that afternoon, and she knew how much she would like to go.
I knew so too, and at once said I would leave my cooking till the afternoon and finish a smart blouse Cecilly had been making for herself.
“Do let me do the cooking while you sew,” Cynthia asked, but I said she had better not as the dinner was to be what the boys called a triumph of “mind over matter,” meaning a dinner was to be made out of scraps, which was always tiring work. But Cynthia insisted on being cook.
I had already sent Beatrice Ethel, the little boot-girl, out for a quart of skimmed or separated milk which Cecilly made into Sago Soup: Take three or four onions and boil them in the milk till soft enough to run through a sieve. Boil six large potatoes and rub through sieve. Put all back into milk with pepper and salt. Add a teacup of sago, tapioca, rice, or some macaroni. But sago is best. Send up fried bread with this.
Our meat course was to be breakfast pies, and as there were some scraps over, Cynthia made a mulligatawny pâté, which would come in for breakfast.
Our pudding was a German Pudding: 1 lb. flour, 1 teaspoonful of carbonate of soda rubbed into the flour, 6 oz. of scraped fat, ½ lb. treacle melted in milk. To be boiled for three hours. This would have been sufficient for our dinner, but Cynthia begged to make a few jam tarts, as she “loved making pastry.” Whey they were finished, she had a piece of pastry over, which she turned into Cheese Puffs. She rolled out her paste, sprinkled it thickly with cheese and “Paisley Flour,” repeating the process several times. She brushed them over with a little egg, and baked them at once. I suggested, as we were well off for milk, she might make a custard to eat with our pudding, with “Bird’s Custard Powder,” but only on condition that she asked leave to come back with Cecilly to help us eat such a grand dinner. Lately I had noticed that she had been allowed to accept our invitations for the evening, and although it seemed a mistake for Jack to be in her company too often, it was such a delight for him to find her with us when he returned home, I could not resist asking her.
Cecilly had of course accepted Cynthia’s invitation to the concert with much delight, and I, having locked up the house, had spent a pleasant afternoon with dear Aunt Jane, who had given me a great bunch of beautiful white lilies, and a basket of gooseberries for the boys.
I was only just back when I heard Cecilly’s knock, and finding her alone I asked if Cynthia were not coming to dinner.
“Yes, indeed she is,” answered Cecilly, “and what do you think? Mr. Marriott has invited himself also!”
“Oh, Cecilly,” I cried. “You must go at once and get some fish and some fruit,” but Cecilly interrupted me, saying—
“No, he stipulates that we make no change. He is coming to eat Cynthia’s cooking, and I promised him we would have nothing extra, except some coffee.”
Of course I brought out our best table linen and china, rubbed up our silver and glass, and with Aunt Jane’s lilies for decoration our dinner-table looked as nice as possible. Cecilly ran up the road to meet Jack to tell him the news as soon as she saw him, and we had to be quite determined not to be over-ruled, so anxious was he for various additions to our meal.
“Could you not run to Aunt Jane and ask her to lend us her maid,” he asked, but I insisted on no change being made.
“Mr. Marriott is coming to see how clever Cynthia is, and not to quiz us,” I replied, so Jack had to be content. The soup was a great success. We turned the Mulligatawny pie into an entrée, and added the jam tarts to the pudding course. Cecilly and Bob fetched and carried the dishes, though I slipped out during the cheese course to make the coffee for dessert.
We were a very merry party at dinner, and Cynthia had many congratulations from us all. Jack and Mr. Marriott were a long time before they joined us in the drawing-room, but when they came the evening was one of the pleasantest we had spent since dear father’s illness. Jack was so much more like his old self, and Mr. Marriott so positive of father’s recovery that every doubt and perplexity of life fled, and it seemed to me that all the pain of separation and the grave anxieties of the past were now fled for ever. Cecilly and the boys had gone up to bed while I waited for Jack to return from walking back with Cynthia and her father, and when he came in I saw at once he had good news for me.
“Oh, Kitty,” he cried, in his old boyish manner, “you can never guess what Mr. Marriott has said to me this evening. He said he always knew a good son would make a good husband, but that he felt his little girl would never make a good wife for a poor man. But, Kitty Mavourneen, he says you and Cecilly have shown her the way, and if, when she is twenty-one, I like to ask her to be my wife, he won’t send me away.”
I was obliged to run upstairs to call Cecilly to hear these good tidings, and Cecilly in her dressing-gown, with her hair streaming down her back, rushed down the stairs at a bound to hug Jack in a way she had not dared to do since he had grown “so cross and old.”
It was but a few weeks afterwards that we were welcoming father and mother back once more—father, older-looking certainly than before his illness, but no longer an invalid, while mother looked stronger and rosier than any of us could remember her. They were both surprised to find how well we could manage the housework, though father insisted on our keeping Beatrice Ethel all day to do the heaviest work.
“As soon as I am in work again,” he said, “we must find a strong servant once more,” and on our protesting he answered, “My darlings, you were perfectly right in doing without servants as you have done. Now there is really no necessity, and it is wiser for Cecilly to spend her time over her music, to enable her to teach others. You, dear Kitty, we will gladly spare to Mrs. Moore, knowing you can help her in her infirmity. This work you are both fitted to undertake, and you can then conscientiously leave the housework to those other girls, who, not having had the education God has permitted you to have, can only labour with their hands and hearts. Your experience will make you better mistresses, I am convinced. You will be more competent to teach and more sympathetic over failures and shortcomings, and will never in all your life regret that all these months you have managed without servants.”