The great thing about Eileen was her willingness, and her anxiety to learn.
When I was seeking to impart knowledge, however, she seemed to think it was for her also to contribute some general information. Hence our duologues often ran on these lines:—
“When you make the tea or coffee, be sure that the water is quite boiling; or else——”
“Yes, ma’am. Do you know, one of the young gentlemen where I used to live, couldn’t help being bald, no matter if he used a whole bottle of hair restorer every day. It ran in his fambly.”
“Really! Well, now we’ll fry some bacon. You put a little of the bacon fat from this jar into the pan first of all to get hot. Like this.”
“Yes, ma’am. Isn’t it strange, grandmother won’t never have red roses in her bonnet. Can’t bear red.”
She also excelled in asking questions; from morn till eve life seemed one long series of conundrums which I was expected to answer. I never realized before how many queries country life presents; hitherto it had seemed to me such a simple, straightforward state of existence.
An old man had been secured to do an occasional odd day’s work (at highest London prices). He described some misfortune that, last autumn, had befallen “Hussy,” the cow who comes for change of air into my orchard at intervals—an apple she had eaten (one of mine, of course) being blamed for the fact that her milk turned off, “like vinegar ’twas.”
Eileen—in common with every other young human under twenty years of age—thrilled at the word apple, and inquired if “Hussy” had stolen it off a tree?
“Stolen it off a tree!” scoffed the man; “and why should she bother to creek her neck up’ards when they was lying by the thousand as thick on the ground in that thur orchard as—as—well, as apples!”