We dine early, and the cooking for the late supper is performed in what we call “the second kitchen,” beyond this. I believe that what is now the Vicarage was originally an old farmhouse, of which this same charming kitchen was the chief “living-room.” It is quite a journey, through long, low passages, to get from the modern part of the house to this.
One year, when the “languages fad” was strong upon us, Eleanor and I earned many a backache by carrying the huge volumes of the Della Crusca Italian dictionary from the dining-room shelves to the kitchen. We piled them on the oak chest for reference, and ran backwards and forwards to them from the table where we sat and beat our brains over the “Divina Commedia,” while the wind growled in the tall old box-trees without, and the dogs growled in dreams upon the hearth.
It is by this well-scrubbed table, in this kitchen, that our biographies are to be written. They cannot be penned under the noses of the boys.
Eleanor finds rocking a help to composition, and she is swinging backwards and forwards in the glossy old rocking-chair, with a pen between her lips, and a vacant gaze in her eyes, that becomes almost a look of inspiration when the swing of the chair turns her face towards the ceiling. For my own part I find that I can meet the crisis of a train of ideas best upon my feet, so I pace up and down past the old black dresser, with its gleaming crockery, like a captain on his quarter-deck. Suddenly Eleanor’s chair stands still.
“Margery,” she says, laying her head upon the table at her side, “I do think this is a capital idea.”
“Yours will be capital,” I reply, pausing also, and leaning back against the dresser; “for you have kept your old diaries, and——”
“My dear Margery, what if I have kept my old diaries? I’ve lived in this place my whole life. Now, you have had some adventures! I quite look forward to reading your life, Margery. You have no idea what pleasure it gives me to think of it. I was thinking just now, if ever we are separated in life, how I shall enjoy looking over it again and again. You must give me yours, you know, and I will give you mine. Yes; I am very glad we thought of it.” And Eleanor begins to rock once more, and I resume my march.
But this quite settles the matter in my mind. To please Eleanor I would try to do a great deal; much more than this. I will write my autobiography.
Though it seems rather (to use an expressive Quaker term) a “need-not” to provide for our being separated in life, when we have so firmly resolved to be old maids, and to live together all our lives in the little whitewashed cottage behind the church.