‘Yes. The tourists have not molested it yet, and only natives bathe there, so she goes every year to renovate herself and sketch, and comes back furbished up like an old snake, with lots of drawings of impossible peaks, like Titian’s backgrounds. We’ll write and tell her to make ready for the head of her house!’
‘Oh, but—’ began Frank, looking to his wife.
‘Would it not be intruding?’ said Mary.
‘She will be enchanted! She always likes to have anything to do for anybody, and she says the scenery is just a marvel. You care for that! You are so deliciously fresh, beauties aren’t a bore to you.’
‘We are glad of the excuse,’ said Frank gravely.
‘You look ill enough to be an excuse for anything, and Mary too! How about a maid? Is Harte going?’
‘No,’ said Mary; ‘she says that foreign food made her so ill once before that she cannot attempt going again. I meant to do without.’
‘That would never do!’ cried Bertha. ‘You have quite enough on your hands with Northmoor, and the luggage and the languages.’
‘Is not an English maid apt to be another trouble?’ said Mary. ‘I do not suppose my French is good, but I have had to talk it constantly; and I know some German, if that will serve in the Tyrol.’
‘I’ll reconcile it to your consciences,’ said Bertha triumphantly. ‘It will be a real charity. There’s a bonny little Swiss girl whom some reckless people brought home and then turned adrift. It will be a real kindness to help her home, and you shall pick her up when you come up to me on your way, and see my child! Oh, didn’t I tell you? We had a housemaid once who was demented enough to marry a scamp of a stoker on one of the Thames steamers. He deserted her, and I found her living, or rather dying, in an awful place at Rotherhithe, surrounded by tipsy women, raging in opposite corners. I got her into a decent room, but too late to save her life—and a good thing too; so I solaced her last moments with a promise to look after her child, such a jolly little mortal, in spite of her name—Boadicea Ethelind Davidina Jones. She is two years old, and quite delicious—the darling of all the house!’