“I will start on clearing it up when Anne has gone back to school this afternoon,” she said to herself, as she crouched by the stove. The house was very quiet, but outside there was constant sound and commotion, as long streams of migratory birds passed overhead on their way from the cold, rock-bound shores of Labrador and the land round Baffin’s Bay. They were bound for the warm and sunny south, and the air echoed with the plaintive “hawnk, honk” of the geese as they flew in single streams or wedge-like masses.
So quiet was the house, and Bertha was so very tired, that presently she fell asleep, and was still dozing when Anne came in, all blown about, and sweetly fresh with autumn winds and raindrops, for the weather was getting more stormy as the day wore on.
“Oh, Bertha, why did you trouble to cook?” cried Anne, with a little dismay in her tone. The savoury smells resulting from Bertha’s labours were filling the house, and saluted her as she burst in at the door, hungry and tired with her long morning of work in the school.
“It was not any trouble,” said Bertha, starting up and rubbing her eyes with much the same guilty feeling which came to her, when she overslept herself in the mornings, “and it is so long since you have had anything better than roast potatoes and butter for your dinner.”
“Roast potatoes and butter are not to be despised, I can tell you,” laughed Anne, as she sat down at the table to enjoy the unwonted luxury of being waited upon; “but a real stew properly made is something of a luxury, I can assure you.”
What was there in those words to make Bertha wince as if someone had struck her a blow? There would have been nothing, less than nothing, but for that awakened conscience of hers, which reminded her of the many times her sisters had had to sit down to badly prepared and insufficient meals, just because she had been too indolent to bestir herself for the cooking.
“I am sorry it storms so. Hilda will have quite a dreadful journey across to the Sudeleys,” she said presently, as she sat watching Anne, getting a lot of enjoyment out of her sister’s zest for the meal, but eating very little herself.
“Hilda won’t mind that, I fancy,” laughed Anne. “Mrs. Nelson is to be at the Sudeleys to-day, and Hilda is very keen on meeting her, you know.”
“No, I don’t know. I do not believe that I have ever heard of her before. Who is she? The mother of a likely pupil?” asked Bertha, with no lack of interest now; for another pupil, of course, meant more money, and where the means are so straitened every little sum becomes of vital importance.
Anne laughed. “Of course you do not know. I keep forgetting that you have been out of everything for the last fortnight. But we had to keep you as quiet as possible, because you would go off your head every minute that you got a chance for doing it. But when Hilda comes home to-morrow she will tell you herself all about her hopes and fears, and what her chances are. Now I am going to make haste and wash the dishes, because I must be back at school very early this afternoon.”