CHAPTER III
The Second Lady-Help
'The droop, the low cares of the mouth,
The trouble uncouth
'Twixt the brows, all that air one is fain
To put out of its pain.'
And for actually six months that home survived! After that the crumbling was to be expected, for some discerning man came along, and married the marvellous lady-help out of hand.
Mr. Cameron spent five pounds in the purchase of a pair of entrée dishes for a wedding-present, and was unhappy that he could so very inadequately reward her great services. But there was a curious air of buoyancy and relaxation observable in him the first day the house was free of her.
At tea he got The Master of Ballantrae out, and read boldly all through the meal, a thing he had not ventured to do for eighteen months. And out in the frozen shrubbery at midnight, with the Master and Mr. Henry thrusting at each other, he spilled the tea that Hermie passed him. When he saw the wide brown stain he had made on the table's whiteness—although the ridiculous fancy pursued him that it was the Master's life-blood smirching the snow—he looked up startled, full of apologies. But there was only Hermie's childish face in front of him; and though she said, 'Oh, papa!' as became a president of the tea-tray, she looked away the next second to laugh at Roly, who had spread his bread with jam on both sides, and did not know how best to hold it. And Cameron felt so much a man and master of his fate once more, that he stretched right across the table to help himself to butter, instead of politely requesting the passing of it. For three months the household ran a merry course. Hermie, a bright little woman of eleven, begged her father to let her 'keep house' and give the orders to Lizzie, the very young general servant.
The father bent his thoughts five minutes to the problem; Miss Macintosh had been away now a fortnight, and everything seemed going along really delightfully. What need to break the sweet harmony of the days by getting in some person whose principles counted reading at table and spilling tea among the cardinal vices?
And Lizzie, the State girl, was at his elbow with a shining face. She was fifteen, she said—fifteen was real old! Now why should the master go getting in any more of them lady-helps, who did nothing but scold from morning to night? She, Lizzie, would undertake all there was to do in this place 'on her head.'
Cameron smiled at the eager girls, and, while hardly daring to consent, put off for a further day the engagement of a successor to Miss Macintosh. And the three months ran gaily along, and still Hermie sat importantly at the head of the table, and still her father read, and still Roly spread his bread upon both sides.
There was always a good table—far better than either the mother or lady-help had kept.