“Now, if you lived in our house, would you make things different?” I said.
“I shall—” she began, and then she stopped.
“Oh yes, Dumps—yes. Your house isn’t at all what it ought to be; it isn’t well ordered.”
“How would you manage things? I wish you would tell me, Miss Donnithorne—I really do—for now I have been with you, and eaten such delicious meals, and been in such a pretty, very clean house, I see the difference.”
“It would be difficult for you to make much change,” she said; “but of course there are always things to be done. Your house wants—”
She paused to consider. There came a frown between her brows.
“Dumps dear,” she said after a pause, “I cannot explain just now. Your house wants—well, I will say it—to be turned topsy-turvy, inside out, round about; to be—to be made as different from what it is now as the sun is different from the moon.”
“If that is the case I needn’t trouble,” I said in a sort of desponding tone, “for Hannah won’t work any harder, and I don’t think I can; and father likes his meals anyhow, and the boys and I—well, I suppose we are poor; I’m sure I don’t know, but there doesn’t seem to be much money. It will feel so strange when I go home.”
“Trust to better times coming,” said Miss Donnithorne. “The house can be altered. I will write to you about it.”
We were sitting by the fire on the last evening when she said this. I turned to her.