It was Keziah who welcomed us, and I have always had an affection for her in consequence. She was housemaid then, and took to the kitchen afterwards. After she had been about five years at the Vicarage, she announced one day that she wished to go. She had no reason to give but that she “thought she’d try a change.” She tried one—for a month—and didn’t like it. Mrs. Arkwright took her back again, and in kitchen and back premises she reigns supreme to this day.
From her we learned that Mr. and Mrs. Arkwright, who had gone away for a parson’s fortnight, were still from home. We had no lack of welcome, however.
It seems strange enough to speak of a fire as comfortable in July. And yet I well remember that the heavy dew and evening breeze was almost chilly after sunset, and a sort of vault-like feeling about the rooms, which had been for a week or more unused, made us offer no resistance when Keziah began to light a fire. While she was doing so Eleanor exclaimed, “Let’s go and warm ourselves in the kitchen.”
Any idea of comfort connected with a kitchen was quite new to me, but I followed Eleanor, and made my first acquaintance with the old room where we have spent so many happy hours.
We found the door shut; much, it seemed, to Eleanor’s astonishment. But the reason was soon evident. As our footsteps sounded on the stone passage there arose from behind the kitchen door an utterly indescribable din of howling, yowling, squealing, scratching, and barking.
“It’s the dear boys!” said Eleanor, and she ran to open the door. For a moment I thought of her brothers (who must, obviously, be maniacs!), but I soon discovered that the “dear boys” were the dogs of the establishment, who were at once let loose upon us en masse. I have a faint remembrance of Eleanor and a brown retriever falling into each other’s arms with cries of delight; but I was a good deal absorbed by the care of my own small person, under the heavy onslaught of dogs big and little. I was licked copiously from chin to forehead by the more impetuous, and smelt threateningly at the calves of my legs by the more cautious of the pack.
They were subsiding a little, when Eleanor said, “Oh, cook, why did you shut them up? Why didn’t you let them come and meet us?”
“And how was I to know who it was at the door, Miss Eleanor?” replied an elderly, stern-looking female, who, in her time, ruled us all with a rod of iron, the dogs included. “Dear knows it’s not that I want them in the kitchen. The way them dogs behaves, Miss Eleanor, is scandilus.”
“Dear boys!” murmured Eleanor; on which all the dogs, who were settling down to sleep on the hearth, wagged their tails, and threatened to move.
“Much good it is me cleaning,” cook continued, “when that great big brown beast of yours goes roaming about every night in the shrubberies, and comes in with his feet all over my clean floor.”