We did not hurry over the meal. Virginia got on a lengthy dissertation as to the crying need for fish forks with magnetised prongs that would just draw the bones out of the fish, without any preliminary search and scrutiny. I suggested a radium tip to the prongs—I could think of nothing that seemed more suitable—but she said that might demolish fish and all, in which case one would get no more personal satisfaction out of the creature than one does when having to eat it with its full complement of bones intact.
I then ventured a suggestion that forks made like an ordinary magnet would do, if the fish were given steel drops in regular doses for a few weeks before being caught, so as to get its bones susceptible to the magnet. But Virginia was very lofty, as she always is, about my scientific explanations. I never heard her solution of the problem, because the telegram boy arrived at the moment, with a wire for Abigail, saying that her mother had broken her arm (a genuine case this time!).
So she left by the next train, bewailing the fact that her mother could not get compensation from anyone, as she had given up a post of housekeeper but three months before; if she had only been in the situation still she could have claimed £300 a year for life, Abigail thought—provided the arm could only be induced to remain broken.
Some people, especially her relatives, were always unfortunate, she said, while others were just the reverse. There was a cousin of a friend of hers; he had been out of work for a year or so before he got a job, and then the very first day he met with an accident at the works and had to have his leg amputated; and there he is now, a gentleman for life, comfortably settled on his compensation. Her people never had luck like that. It did seem hard!
“Are you awake?” Virginia’s voice lilted up the stairs next morning.
Awake! why, sleep had been impossible in that cottage for hours past!
For sheer undiluted racket, commend me to two earnest-souled girls, who get up early, and go about with a stealthy tread that creaks every old board in the place, and commune with each other in stage whispers that penetrate through every crack in the floor, all on the pretext of making the fire!
We had decided that we could manage very well ourselves, without sending for anyone to take Abigail’s place; and in order to forestall me, the others had got up about cockcrow, and then began such a whirligig below, that I just lay still and endeavoured to allocate every fresh noise.
They raked and shovelled at the grate, and appeared to be scattering cinders all over the place. They broke up applewood twigs with resounding snaps, and argued as to the amount required to set the fire going. Ursula said you ought to put in handfuls till you got a good crackling blaze; Virginia said that was a childish, brainless way of doing it, to say nothing of the chance of waste; by rights the quantity of twigs employed ought to be strictly in inverse ratio to the quantity of inflammable gas contained in the coal. I dare say I should have heard a good deal more as to the way to assess the ignitable quality of coal, but fortunately the fire burnt up quickly, and they gave their attention to other domestic details.