The chamber, a small one, was in the wildest confusion. Sheets of manuscript were strewn on table, chair, and bed. Garments of all sorts lay about in the wildest disorder. The bed was unmade, and a liberal coating of grey dust showed on such of the furniture as was not covered with papers or clothes. She gave a groan of dismay at the sight. It was as if the eyes of her mind had been opened at once to see all her defects and shortcomings.
“I can’t stop to tidy it now. But I will do differently to-morrow—oh, I will!” she said, with a fervent outburst, as she dragged on dry garments and twisted her wet hair into an untidy knot at the top of her head.
The wet clothes were all left in a heap in one corner of the room, for her sole idea was to have supper ready for Anne—the very nicest supper which could be managed in the time.
This was one of the nights when Hilda did not come home to sleep, and it was a secret satisfaction to Bertha that she would be able to get her small reforms well under way, before her sharp-tongued second sister appeared on the scene again.
“It will have to be white monkey on toast, I think; that is the quickest thing that I can do,” she muttered, as she darted to and fro collecting the milk, flour, butter, egg, and other ingredients which went to the making of the dish known as white monkey; then, while the milk was getting hot in the double saucepan, she grated the cheese and toasted generous slices of bread, on which the white monkey was to be spread.
There was such a glow of triumph in her heart, and such a sense of elation in her bearing, that for a time it over-mastered her weariness. She had done a brave thing, a really plucky deed, and although she had been in a manner forced into the doing, nothing could take the joy of it from her.
Oh, it was good, it was good to be of use in the world—to do something which but for her must have been left undone. And Jan Saunders had said that the man’s life hung upon her hands!
“My dear Bertha, what have you been doing to yourself?” cried a voice from the door, in a tone of shocked surprise, and Bertha, who had been too busy to notice the sound of approaching steps, turned quickly, to see her eldest sister standing on the threshold, while just behind was a gentleman who was a stranger to her.
Then it flashed upon poor Bertha what an awful object she must look, with her wet hair screwed into a tight knot on the top of her head, and her garments simply pitch-forked on to her person.
And Anne was as neat and trim as if fresh from making a toilet, although in reality she had been teaching the township school all day.