“My good little sister, you were inexperienced. You will do better another year.”
“But there’s nothing to go on upon!”
He reminded her of the rent for the London house, and the dividends that must soon come in.
“Then it will be as bad as ever! How can we live more cheaply than we do?”
“Ellen is an excellent manager, and you had better consult her on the scale of your expenditure.”
Caroline’s spirit writhed, but before she had time to say anything, or talk to Janet, the Colonel had heard his excellent housewife’s voice, and called her into the council. She was as good as possible, too serenely kind to manifest surprise or elation at the fulfilment of her forebodings. To be convicted of want of economy would have been so dreadful and disgraceful, that she deeply felt for poor Caroline, and dealt with her tenderly and delicately, even when the weekly household books were opened, and disclosed how much had been spent every week in items, the head and front of which were oft repeated in old nurse’s self-taught writing—
“Man...... Glas of beare. 1d.
Creme........... 3d.”
For had not the Colonel’s wife warned against the endless hospitality of glasses of beer to all messengers; and had not unlimited cream with strawberries and apple-tarts been treated as a kind of spontaneous luxury produced at the Belforest farm agent’s? To these, and many other small matters, Caroline was quite relieved to plead guilty, and to promise to do her best by personal supervision; and Ellen set herself to devise further ways of reduction, not realising how hopeless it is to prescribe for another person’s household difficulties. It is not in the nature of things that such advice should be palatable, and the proverb about the pinching of the shoe is sure to be realised.
“Too many servants,” said prudence. “If old nurse must be provided for—and she ought to have saved enough to do without—it would be much better to pension her off, or get her into an almshouse.”
Caroline tried to endure, as she made known that she viewed nurse as a sacred charge, about whom there must be no question.