'As you wish, Miss Lilian,' said Nancy, relinquishing the polishing-leather with no great sorrow. 'Miss Vaughan, she always did it her own self, too. Was you going to do anything with that stock that has been in the larder since Monday?'
'Oh, Nancy, I had forgotten all about it!' cried Lilian, much conscience-stricken at the reminder. 'And I had intended to make it into soup. Do go and fetch it, and see if it is still good.'
But the stock, alas! had accumulated a skim of green mould on the surface, and generally betrayed such symptoms of distress that it was fit for nothing but the pig-trough; and when Lilian, warned by its awful example, visited her neglected shelves, she found so many forgotten scraps put away into odd corners that she straightway formed the excellent resolution of reviewing the larder daily after breakfast, having an uneasy sensation that it was one of the golden rules which Aunt Helen had particularly impressed upon her, but which, like many others, had slidden into the background of her remembrance.
It was certainly one thing to housekeep with Aunt Helen at her elbow to advise, and quite another to puzzle it out with only her memory and the cookery-book for assistance. The quantities required for a family of five persons was a subject which took her some time to master.
'There's the butcher's boy at the back-door, miss,' observed Nancy one morning, a few days after the wedding, putting her head into the Rose Parlour, and interrupting the 'Bridal March' from 'Lohengrin' which Lilian was trying over on the piano. 'He's left his cart at the bottom of the drive, but he'll fetch up anything you want.'
The butcher only came round weekly at Gorswen, so Lilian abandoned her music and sallied forth to give her first order.
'We're quite tired of great sirloins of beef and legs of mutton,' she announced. 'Haven't you anything else this morning?'
'Nice bit of pork, mum,' suggested the man—'fillet of veal.'
'I'm sure the veal would be a change; we haven't had any for a long time.'