“I trust you are mistaken. But come into the dining-room, again, please. I should like to have you tell me anything you happen to think of about our new home. I am so great a stranger to the locality that I am as eager as a child to hear its history. Will you not?”
“Thank you, ma’am. I guess not. I just stepped across to say if they was anything any of us could do for you we was to be notified. Them was Mr. Brook’s own words. An’ him an’ her both hopes you will rest well an’ find things comfortable. I left a basket of late-keepin’ apples in the pantry, an’ I make my good evenin’s to you, ma’am.”
The door had scarcely closed behind him before Bonny began to laugh. “You really must let me have it out, Motherkin, or I shall be sure to do it before Bob. That will make him think lightly of his sin. But now you can foresee how delightfully the monotony of our existence will be varied by the ‘little episodes’ between that ancient worthy and our small sinner.”
“Beatrice, it is really too miserable an occurrence to jest over.”
“But just sub rosa this way. And I warn you, you are deluded into the impression that you know your own mind and that you can manage your own house. But it will be left for Mr. Dolloway to convince you that you do not. He takes a lively interest in all his master’s schemes, and in us—his latest—particularly. He will be the thorn to this rose, the rod of correction to our careless lives. Fortunately in this case not like master is the man. Well, I’ll clear away the tea-things now;” and Beatrice departed kitchenward to put on a big apron.
Isabelle proffered her assistance, but it was laughingly declined as “not available.” “No, dear, not to-night. You’re company, and I am in an angelic mood. You’d better enjoy it while it lasts; so run out and take another walk with the ‘head of the family,’ whom I see strutting about over his garden patch as if he were king of the whole earth. My big brother is a poet; but he is also a born farmer. He loves the smell of the soil, and I know it was the making of him to come up here. He’d have grown into a disappointed, narrow-minded tape-seller if he’d stayed in town always. Now—well, I hardly dare tell you all I foresee in my Roland’s future!”
“Oh, Bonny! hasn’t all this hard work you have been doing taken the enthusiasm out of you yet? It seems lovely up here, and oh, so peaceful! But isn’t it just a bit too quiet and humdrum?”
“Trot along, miss! To-morrow when I hand over the housekeeping to you the humdrumness will disappear!”
“Why—what do you mean, Beatrice?”
“Coming events cast no shadows before in this case. When I have finished my dishes, Mother will be down again with her youngest in a beatific state of mind, looking as sweet and innocent as if he had been the sinned against instead of the sinner; then I’ll call you and Roland in, and we’ll talk over everything and arrange a fair division of labor.”