“Yes,” said Mrs. Conway.
“Zen I won’t have it,” said Miss Weenie. “Don’t want nasty old fings for my wesing present. Want nicey new fings.”
So the mother found a butter-dish that possessed the necessary qualification, and, to make the gift larger, a silver folding fruit-knife that Mrs. Conway had always used was added to it.
“Now I have wedding presents for you all,” she said; “so no more silver, except spoons and forks.” Only a few books were to go, she said, just one small boxful. They might choose twelve each, and she herself would select the rest.
A whole day flew, of course, in the choosing, and then the stacks carried into the big bedroom for packing were frequently disarranged for some change to [114] ]be made, so hard was the decision. Amongst those finally packed were The Wide, Wide World, a little brown, shabby volume that was Phyl’s chiefest treasure, and the first book she had possessed, Little Women, Alice in Wonderland and In the Looking-Glass, Ivanhoe, Andersen’s Fairy Tales, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, two or three other books of Fairy Tales, Robinson Crusoe, Readings with the Poets, Jessica’s First Prayer, Macaulay’s Lays of Rome, The Swiss Family Robinson, The Lamplighter, Misunderstood, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Scottish Chiefs, The Arabian Nights, an annual or two, Little Wideawake, which was Dolly’s first book, and a volume or two of Sunshine.
The stack of dull-covered lesson-books was a small one, and such was the mother’s pre-occupation she did not notice. There were Mangnall’s Questions and Stepping Stones, books so heartily hated, their sense of duty was too keen to leave them behind. There was Mary’s Grammar, that once they had been attached to by the seeming innocence of its stories, but that on further acquaintance they mistrusted entirely as being a species of powder in jam. There was Butter’s Spelling Book, and a blue geography in the question and answer form. Also a very thin atlas, and the one of the two table-books they possessed that did not contain “weights and measures.”
The days leapt along; the last boxes were corded. All good-byes to friends had been said. “Yesterday [115] ]was Monday,” Phyl said once in surprise, “and now to-day’s Saturday!” and even the mother agreed with her.
There came the final move. The boxes went early, then breakfast came—a strange meal, eaten without a table-cloth, and with cups and plates that no longer belonged to them—breakfast with a world grey to blackness out-of-doors, and within a fire that refused to burn up so early, and gas that flickered as if to help the melancholy effect. Then a four-wheeled cab for the long drive to the station; the backward, fearful glance of the three at the old, quiet, dull-coloured house, and Harriet standing waving there, red-eyed; then the forward, eager one at the thought of the life a-stretch.
A long journey in the express train to London. Phyl had learned its rate was sixty miles an hour, and was staggered by the announcement, for ordinary trains she found ran only thirty to forty.
“We’ll have to catch hold of something very hard,” she told her sisters, drawing a long breath at the beginning, “or we’ll be whirled out of our seats and choked, I expect.”