“Four-and-six.” (An audible chuckle.) “Yes, four-and-six, if you believe me! Fancy her having the face to ask it for that brown duck! But there, those that can afford to pay may just as well do so for those who can’t.”
“Just as well. But—four-and-six! And she won’t finish it up neither; doesn’t care for cold poultry, I’m told; she’ll have a fair slice from the breast, but that’s all; never allows it to be seen in the dining-room a second time. And there’s only the two of them there now. Still, that Abigail’s a hearty eater! My husband was up there a-fixing a tile that had got loosish on the roof, and he told me what she et that day. A gammon rasher and an egg and four slices of bread and butter and a piece of fried bread out of the frying-pan and two cups of coffee—half milk—and some jam for breakfast. He was just a-going up the ladder past the kitchen window at the time; and when he come down, finding as he needed a bit of cement, she was having lunch of bread and cheese and a cup o’ tea out of her lady’s teapot—she always has a cup of tea between ’leven and twelve—and he’d smoked his pipe right out afore she’d finished. And when he come down again at dinner-time she was having a dinner fit for a growed man just come home from the cattle market—made him hungry to see her, it did; he hung about a bit looking for his jack-knife, as he wanted something to measure with. And at tea-time he went in for a drop o’ water to mix the cement, and she was having potted meat and toast—butter, too, not dripping toast, if you ever did. But, of course, she relishes the good vittles she gets in a country place like ourn. So different to the stuff you get in a town.”
“You’re right there; but they do have a sight o’ things down from London. There was a box with ‘Army and Navy Stores’ writ on it that was so heavy, it was all old Bob could do to get it on his shoulder, with our Tom to give him a hand. Old Bob said he’d been reading in the papers what awful waste there is in some o’ the army camps and how the food gets throw’d away or sold by the cartload, to get rid of it, but he didn’t know it was going on in the navy too—wicked, I call it. They thought it must be tinned things, it were such a weight, but they couldn’t make out for sure, though they rattled it ever so hard to see; it was packed up awful tight.”
“Taters weigh heavy, but it wouldn’t be they; she’s got plenty, what with new ones coming on soon, and a large box left still of the old ones; I saw them in the scullery last time I was there. I’m going to ask if I can have ’em, I’m so short for the pig. It might have been soap and soda and hearthstone, though; they all weighs heavy.”
“That’s true. Still, I know for certain she has a heap of queer things sent down, because when I was in Jane Price’s the other day, she had a pot of something called ‘tunny fish,’ whatever that may be, on the dresser. I asked her what it was. She told me she was passing here one day and thought she heard someone calling her name; so she stepped inside and looked around. No one was there, but she chanced to pass the back door, and there on the top of the dustbin she saw this pot. She brought it away with her just to ask our Tom if he knew what it was; but he says they don’t catch it about here; never heeard tell on it. Still, those sort of things aren’t like a nice piece of fat bacon to my taste, to say nothing of duck; though I like a bit more picking on mine than they’ll be on that brown one, I reckon.”
“D’you know, I expect they’re cooking it now to have it cold for the company’s supper to-night, because in any case they don’t need it to-day. They had two chops and a shoulder of lamb and some gravy beef on Saturday. I met the boy taking it up, and asked him what he had. They’d have the chops that day, and the lamb roast on Sunday, and cold Monday; and it’s only Tuesday now, and they can’t have finished it up—it was a fair-sized one; and there’s the gravy beef soup. You may depend it’s for the visitors.”
“Oh! I didn’t know she was expecting company? It won’t be Miss Virginia and her sister, because they’re abroad. She asked my husband to call for her afternoon letters as he was passing the post-office yesterday, and he brought ’em up, and there was a postcard with a picture on it of some foreign place, and it said, ‘This is our hotel; enjoying ourselves immensely; expect to be here a fortnight.’ And there was something written at the bottom that I couldn’t make out, but it might have been a ‘V,’ or a ‘U,’ only it was smudged so’s you couldn’t see what it was. So it was sure to be from them.”
“No, it wasn’t they two; ’twasn’t their trunks.”
“More than one trunk, is there? Then they’re going to stay a little while. My Buff Orpingtons have started to lay again; that’s lucky. How many do you say were coming?”
“I don’t know for certain, but I fancy it must be three, because there were two blankets, one single-bed and one double, hanging in the sun when I came past yesterday, and Abigail was polishing the downstairs winders, and she’d got clean cutt’ns to the little room over the kitchen, as well as in the sittin’-room. Not that there was any need to put up clean cutt’ns, that I can see; those in the sittin’-room had only been up two months, and the upstairs ones were new last time she was down here; you could tell they were new, the muslin hung so stiff. I take it a cutt’n isn’t properly washed if it don’t last six months at least. But she’s very pertickler about cutt’ns. Abigail told my Mabel, that in London they don’t never dream of keeping a cutt’n up more than a month, and often th’whole lot is changed in a fortnight; and just think, the winders is done every week! Send me crazy, it would! I don’t think it’s healthy to be as finnicky clean as that; why, you’re always opening winders and letting in draughts. And now this morning I see she’s got the cutt’ns down in the Flower room——”