Inside, activity reigned from cellar to roof-tree—the activity which is the fine flower of many previous days of preparation. Speaking of flowers, they were everywhere. It would seem as if Mr. Kingsley's orders must have stripped the nearest city of scarlet carnations, so lavishly were they combined with the holly and ground-pine of the decorations. Every guest-room smiled with a big bunch of them, reflected cheerily from quaint old mirrors above low dressing-tables. Downstairs they glowed even from obscure corners, lighting up the severely decorous order of the rooms into a vivid suggestion of festivities to come. One big bloom, broken from its stem, had been picked up by Hannah, the cook, and now, tucked securely into her tightly braided black hair, burned hardly more brightly than her cheeks, flushed as they were with excitement and haste.
"It's the cookin' for so many that upsets me," she averred, standing with Mary, the waitress, before a pile of plates and trying to estimate how many would be needed of that particular size. "I was brought up in a big fam'ly myself, but livin' so long in this quiet house and cookin' for one who doesn't eat what a baby would, has made me forget."
"But you wouldn't take the help he said he'd get for you," Mary reminded her.
"To be sure I wouldn't," Hannah cried, hotly. "After workin' for him all these years and gettin' such wages as he pays, would I see another come in and do for him when he has comp'ny—for once in his life? Not even from Mrs. Griggs would I take help with the cookin' and bakin'—not that she'd offer it. And I guess we've enough in the butt'ry, come there never so many extrys."
"I guess we have," Mary agreed proudly, with a glance into the stone-floored buttery, where the ample shelves were laden with food until one might well wonder if they were stoutly enough built to carry such a load. "There's nothin' stingy about him. You should see the chambers, Hannah. There's been fires burnin' in every one of the fireplaces since day before yesterd'y, because he was afraid the rooms would be damp, shut up so long. Isr'el's watched 'em like babies, too, thinkin' they might be a chimley catch fire.... And the sheets, Hannah, that Mrs. Griggs has brought out from the linen-closet that she always keeps locked so careful! What such an old bachelor ever wanted of so many sheets——"
"They was his mother's before him," Hannah explained. She hurried away as she spoke, a towering pile of gold-banded plates in her capable hands. "With the fam'ly she had—and not all of them livin' now to come here to-day—she had need of a plenty of sheets, and fine ones they was, at that. Mrs. Griggs knows just how many there is of 'em, too, I can tell you. One would think they was her own, she's that——"
The appearance of the housekeeper's face in the doorway hushed the talk in the kitchen. Mrs. Griggs bore a message from Mr. Stephen, and to Mr. Stephen she presently returned. With all her cares on this supreme morning, Mrs. Griggs's greatest solicitude was for her master. Not that she ever thought of him by that title. If he had been her elder brother she could not have felt herself more of a sister to him, nor could she have been more anxious lest his wilfulness in the matter of the house-party prove too much for his frail strength. She had insisted with a firm hand that he remain in bed until the latest possible moment, and now that, an hour before train-time, she allowed him to get up, it was still to refuse him the trip he wanted, in his invalid chair, about the lower rooms, to see that all was as he could wish.
"You know very well," said she, "that I've not worked for three weeks getting ready, for nothing. Everything's perfect, if I do say it. You can trust me. And there's no use using up what little gimp you've got."
This was indisputable. "I suppose I haven't much 'gimp,'" Mr. Kingsley admitted, with his patient smile, "though I really feel as if I were possessed of a trifle more than usual, this morning, Mrs. Griggs."
"'Tisn't reliable," his house-keeper responded with conviction. "It's merely excitement, Mr. Stephen, and it's likely to leave you flatter than ever if you go to counting on it."