“I see you’re busy,” she began; “but I won’t keep you a moment. I only want to ask you if you’re expecting Miss Virginia and her sister this afternoon? No? Oh, I am sorry! I did hope they were coming. But, anyhow, whoever it is, do you think they would help to-morrow at the Sale of Work? Two visitors I was expecting have failed me, and I’ve no one possible for the picture post-cards or the pinafores. They needn’t know anything about it, you know; it only wants someone who can reckon up that seven penny cards comes to sevenpence, and that’s one and ninepence change out of half-a-crown, and that sort of thing. Now, do you think your friends would help?”
“But I’ve no friends coming,” I said.
“Haven’t you? Why, I quite understood—— I was calling on Miss Primkins just now (she’s jam and jelly, you know), and I asked her if she couldn’t put it on the pinafores—it would look quite decorative, and in this way I should save a stall; even then we shall be very crowded. Mrs. Blake had just been in to say she couldn’t spare Miss Primkins the duck she had ordered, because you had visitors arriving to-day and would want a pair for Sunday.”
“Oh!! Well, I’m not having visitors, neither am I having the ducks. But I’ll come down myself to-morrow, if that’s any help, and keep one eye on the pinafores and one on the picture postcards. And I think my mental arithmetic will be just right for the change you give.”
“But, don’t you remember, you’ve already promised to look after the bookstall? You sent us that big box of books months ago, with some of your own books in—which I want you to autograph, by the way. So I was going to ask you if at the same time you’d manage the jumble corner—the two things would go very well together.”
I agreed with her heartily.
“Oh, you know I don’t mean anything like that!” she added hastily. “I only meant that you could more easily turn from selling lovely books, to dispose of one of your own done-with-but-still-charming coats and skirts, for instance, than if you had to cut up for the refreshment stall, and return with buttery fingers to respond to the rush there will be for your autograph.”
“Add the postcards to the books,” I said, trying to be equally amiable, “and Abigail will gladly run the jumble corner; she will be smarter at it than you or I.”
Abigail appeared as soon as her ladyship had gone. The farmeress who supplied us with milk was waiting in the kitchen to know if I wanted extra milk morning and evening in future, on account of company; as, if so, she would save it specially. She was experiencing a shortage of milk, “Hussy” having run dry, and “Clover,” for some unknown reason that I hadn’t time to listen to, not doing her lactic duty as befitted her station in life.