Quarrels, with little tender makings up like that had a certain charm while their freshness lasted. But when the fallings out became events of almost weekly occurrence, the fallings in were no longer things to be put away in ‘the hushed herbarium where we keep our hearts’ forget-me-nots.’
Larrie was exacting and inclined to be tyrannical. And Dot was careless and childish, and unreasonable. The first week that the mother did not come down to look after [p 46] ]Peggie, and do her fifty odd acts of straightening, the cottage was in a glorious state of muddle.
Larrie by nature was an order-loving and somewhat methodical man, and had an inborn objection to see Dot’s pretty slippers lying about the house, or stray articles of baby’s clothing on the verandah chairs. He thought breakfast things too ought not to be left on the table till all hours in the morning, and when Dot asked him how he could expect Peggie to dress baby and make the beds and wash up by ten, he retorted brutally that she was a lazy little slattern, and should do it herself.
‘A slattern is a person untidy in herself,’ Dot replied, ‘you can’t say you’ve ever seen me like that, Laurence Armitage!’
And he certainly could not. Whatever her faults were, Dot was a little lady to the backbone, and would have been always sweet and fresh, and guiltless of pins and rents if she had never been able to afford more than fourpence half-penny prints to clothe herself [p 47] ]with. Shabby finery she had a wholesome detestation for; however plain her dress might be, it was always dainty, her shoes fitted trimly, her collar was above reproach and fastened with precision, her gloves were unsoiled, and her hats always fresh if only trimmed with Indian muslin.
But she was certainly a shocking young person where household matters were concerned. There was plenty of work to do even in so small a place; Peggie, however, had cheerfully taken it on her own shoulders at the beginning, and the things she ought to have done and left undone, the little mother did.
It was not until there was a third member in the family that the housework was appreciably neglected. When the fascination of ‘dressing baby’ was no longer new to Dot, and Peggie, its devoted worshipper, begged to add that duty to her others, Dot consented with alacrity. And Larrie looked on and told himself daily these things ought not to be.
[p 48]
]One day there was a very great passage-at-arms. Peggie had gone to Sydney for the day to spend her month’s wages in a fearful and wonderful hat she had long had her eye upon, and Dot was left with the whole burden of the household upon her shoulders.
Generally on the rare occasions of Peggie’s absence, the mother came down and presided over the kitchen and the baby, and Dot had little else to do than lay the table and help to dish up. But to-day Larrie’s wicked conspiracy stood in the way.
The mother sent down a little note; it was very hot, would Dot mind if she did not come, her head was inclined to ache badly? And Larrie had ‘business in town’ and would be back by the train just in time for dinner.