It would have required an earthquake to dislodge Miss Bibby from the stronghold of the dining-room table.
She sat at the head of that table now, a thin delicately-coloured woman not far from forty, with a nervous mouth and anxious blue eyes. Possibly she had been quite pretty in youth, if ever peace and the quiet mind had been hers. But the unrest and worry of her look left rather a disturbed impression on the beholder.
She sat at the head of the table and carved a leg of mutton, and saw Anna putting vegetables upon the children’s plates under silent protest.
She did not believe in meat. She did not believe in vegetables. She did not believe in puddings. Pauline had drawn her into confessing this at the first meal she had had with them, and the shock was so great that Muffie had actually burst into tears, and Max had [p35] clambered down from his chair with the half-formed intention of setting out at once for New Zealand, and dragging his mother back to her proper place.
Miss Bibby, however, set their minds at rest. She had no intention of interfering with the food they were accustomed to; only she begged to be excused from partaking of such herself.
No meat, no vegetables, no pudding, and still alive! The children took an abnormal interest in watching her preparations for eating at each meal.
She began each day, they found out, with a pint of hot water. Indeed they found it out to their sorrow, for she had Mrs. Lomax’s entire permission to work upon themselves one or two of her hygienic reforms—if she could only manage it.
So at seven o’clock, when in various stages of their morning toilet, they were confronted by Miss Bibby, armed with a tall jug of hot water and five tumblers. And they found they had to sit down on the edges of their beds and, receiving a full tumbler, hand back an empty one. If it had been their mother now, they might have protested and wheedled and got out of it in some way. But Miss Bibby was so strange to them, so new—and then mother had bidden them, even as she gave them their last kiss at the station, do [p36] all she bade them—that they found themselves making an absolute habit of this watery beginning to the day. Worse still, instead of being rewarded for such heroic behaviour, they were, in consequence of it, deprived of the pleasant cup of cocoa or hot milk that had always hitherto formed part of their breakfast.
“I consider it perfectly uncivilized to eat and drink at the same meal,” Miss Bibby said.
Pauline blinked at her very fast, in a way she had when angry.