How were Morris and the new maid likely to agree? Did Morris think the girl promising? Surely it was time to take some notice of the servants. Edward would ring the bell twice, the signal for Morris; and Morris should introduce the other two into the parlour. They came, Morris in her best gown, and with her wedding ribbon on. When she had shaken hands with her master and mistress, and spoken a good word for her fellow-servants, as she called them, the ruddy-faced girl appeared, her cheeks many shades deeper than usual, and her cap quillings standing off like the rays on a sign-post picture of the sun. Following her came the boy, feeling awkward in his new clothes, and scraping with his left leg till the process was put a stop to by his master’s entering into conversation with him. Hester’s beauty was really so striking, as with a blushing bashfulness, she for the first time enacted the mistress before her husband’s eyes, that it was impossible not to observe it. Margaret glanced towards her brother, and they exchanged smiles. But the effect of Margaret’s smile was that Mr Hope’s died away, and left him grave.
“Brother!” said Margaret; “what is the true story belonging to that great book about the Polar Sea, that you see lying there?”
“How do you mean? Is there any story belonging to it at all?”
“Three at least; and Deerbrook has been so hot about it—”
“You should send round the book to cool them. It is enough to freeze one to look at the plates of those polar books.”
“Sending round the book is exactly the thing I wanted to do, and could not. Mrs Rowland insists that Mrs Enderby ordered it in; and Mrs Grey demands to have it first; and Mr Rowland is certain that you bespoke it before anybody else. I was afraid of the responsibility of acting in so nice a case. An everlasting quarrel might come out of it: so I covered it, and put in the list, all ready to be sent at a moment’s warning; and then I amused myself with it while you were away. Now, brother, what will you do?”
“The truth of the matter is, that I ordered it in myself, as Mr Rowland says. But Mrs Enderby shall have it at once, because she is ill. It is a fine large type for her; and she will pore over the plates, and forget Deerbrook and all her own ailments, in wondering how the people will get out of the ice.”
“Do you remember, Margaret,” said Hester, “how she looked one summer day,—like a ghost from the grave,—when she came down from her books, and had even forgotten her shawl?”
“Oh, about the battle!” cried Margaret, laughing.
“What battle?” asked Hope. “An historical one, I suppose, and not that of the Rowlands and Greys. Mrs Enderby is of a higher order than the rest of us Deerbrook people: she gets most of her news, and all her battles, out of history.”