CHAPTER XIV
LILIAN'S HOUSEKEEPING
'Thou wert working late, thou busy, busy bee!
After the fall of the cistus flower,
When the primrose-tree blossom was ready to burst,
I heard thee last, as I saw thee first;
In the silence of the evening hour
I heard thee, thou busy, busy bee.'
Aunt Helen was married in September, with the Rector to read the service, and Father to give her away, and Lilian and Peggy for bridesmaids, while the Sunday-school children strewed the path from the church-door with flowers, and Bobby flung rice and old shoes after the carriage, and all the village people came to watch, and say how sweet and pretty she looked, and to wish health and happiness to 'Mrs. John Neville.'
Things felt very flat when the excitement was all over and the last of the guests had left the Abbey, and the children found themselves wishing that life could be a perpetual round of bouquets and favours and wedding-cake, not forgetting presents to the bridesmaids, for Lilian and Peggy were the proud possessors of charming gold lockets set with turquoises, with portraits of Aunt Helen inside them, 'the gifts of the bridegroom,' as the local paper described them, while a silver watch and chain consoled Bobby for not taking a more prominent part in the ceremony, and made him declare that his new uncle was 'a brick, and no mistake.'
After so much dissipation, it was quite hard to settle down to plain prose again; but school had already re-opened, and the children had stolen an extra week of holidays to join in the festivities, so it was high time they were setting to work once more. It seemed strange to start off every morning without Lilian, who only went into Warford once a week now for music-lessons, and Mr. Vaughan had occasional qualms as to the safety of allowing such youthful Jehus to drive about the country unattended; but the little yellow pony-trap was so well known on the road that it would have been rather difficult for anything to happen to the children. People knew the time of their passing, and looked out for them daily; kindly women would come to cottage doorways to nod and smile; the inn-keeper at the Halfway Arms set his clock by their arrival; they had struck up quite a friendship with the postman, two milkmen, and the driver of a fish-cart, while the old man who broke stones by the roadside always nodded and gave them 'Good-morning,' and fired a facetious remark or two after them, which the children imagined he must relieve the monotony of his work by composing during the intervals of their coming and going.
Left alone, Lilian tried to settle down in dead earnest to battle with her task of housekeeping. It was a heavy burden for such young shoulders, for in a farmhouse there is always a great deal of extra work to be done. Pigs, poultry, and young animals had to be fed, and the eggs gathered in daily; the dairy claimed constant attention, for the pans must be scalded and the pails polished bright, and though Joe did the milking and churning, it was Lilian's business to superintend the making up of the butter, and to weigh each pound with her own hands and print it with the Abbey stamp.
Nancy, too, proved somewhat of a trial, for though a hard-working and most kind-hearted girl, she had not been gifted by Providence with either brains or a memory, and was capable of making the most astonishing mistakes, which she invariably justified by declaring she was sure she had done it so 'in Miss Vaughan's time.'
'But, Nancy,' said poor, bewildered Lilian, 'I'm sure Aunt Helen never told you to rub up the silver with paraffin and brickdust. You're scratching it horribly. There's a packet of proper pink powder stuff to do it with somewhere.'
'There's naught like oil and brickdust for putting a polish on metals,' observed Nancy, complacently scouring away at Bobby's christening mug. 'It beats all they rubbish that the pedlars brings round in boxes, and tries hard to persuade you to buy, so it do for sure!'
'I have no doubt about it's being very good for fenders and fire-irons, and things of that sort, but not for the best teapot. Don't you think it would be better, Nancy, if I were to clean the silver on Friday mornings, and you could get on with your kitchen?'