"Elizabeth, take charge of her, and don't let her go. Don't listen to her. We have not seen her for three whole days, and we want her to tell us about the furniture. Keep her safe, and Patty and I will have breakfast ready in a minute."
And in a short time the slice of schnapper was steaming on the table—a most simply appointed breakfast table, but very clean and dainty in its simplicity—and Mrs. Dunn sat down with her young protégées, and sipped her tea and gave them matronly advice, with much enjoyment of the situation.
Her advice was excellent, and amounted to this—"Don't you go for to take a stick o' that there furniture out o' the place." They were to have an auction, she said; and go to Melbourne with the proceeds in their pockets. Hawkins would be glad o' the beds, perhaps, with his large family; as Mrs. Hawkins had a lovely suite in green rep, she wouldn't look at the rest o' the things, which, though very comf'able, no doubt—very nice indeed, my dears—were not what ladies and gentlemen had in their houses now-a-days. "As for that there bureau"—pointing to it with her teaspoon—"if you set that up in a Melbourne parlour, why, you'd just have all your friends laughing at you."
The girls looked around the room with quick eyes, and then looked at each other with half-grave and half amused dismay. Patty spoke up with her usual promptness.
"It doesn't matter in the least to us what other people like to have in their houses," said she. "And that bureau, as it happens, is very valuable, Mrs. Dunn: it belonged to one of the governors before we had it, and Mr. Brion says there is no such cabinet work in these days. He says it was made in France more than a hundred years ago."
"Yes, my dear. So you might say that there was no such stuff now-a-days as what them old gowns was made of, that your poor ma wore when she was a girl. But you wouldn't go for to wear them old gowns now. I daresay the bureau was a grand piece o' furniture once, but it's out o' fashion now, and when a thing is out o' fashion it isn't worth anything. Sell it to Mr. Brion if you can; it would be a fine thing for a lawyer's office, with all them little shelves and drawers. He might give you a five-pound note for it, as he's a friend like, and you could buy a handsome new cedar chiffonnier for that."
"Mrs. Dunn," said Eleanor, rising to replenish the worthy matron's plate, with Patty's new butter and her own new bread, "we are not going to sell that bureau—no, not to anybody. It has associations, don't you understand?—and also a set of locks that no burglar could pick if he tried ever so. We are not going to sell our bureau—nor our piano—"
"Oh, but, my dear Miss Nelly—"
"My dear Mrs. Dunn, it cost ninety guineas, I do assure you, only five years ago, and it is as modern and fashionable as heart could wish."
"Fashionable! why, it might as well be a cupboard bedstead, in that there common wood. Mrs. Hawkins gave only fifty pounds for hers, and it is real walnut and carved beautiful."