“Oh, come along; let’s go and find out,” said Pauline. “I feel so desperate that I have the courage for anything.”
It is to be owned that the Dales did not keep an extensive establishment. Old John pottered about the gardens and did what little gardening he thought necessary. He also did odd jobs about the house. Besides John, there was Betty. Betty ruled supreme as cook and factotum in the kitchen. Betty never asked any one for orders; she got what she considered necessary from the local tradesmen, or she did without. As a rule she did without. She said that cooking was bad for her—that it made her head and back ache. On the days when Betty’s head or back ached there was never any dinner. The family did not greatly mind. They dined on these occasions on bread, either with butter or without. Betty managed to keep them without dinner certainly at the rate of once or twice a week. She always had an excellent excuse. Either the boiler was out of gear, or the range would not draught properly, or the coals were out, or the butcher had failed to come. Sometimes the children managed to have jam with their bread-and-butter, and then they considered that they had a very fine meal indeed. It mattered little to them what sort of food they had if they only had enough; but sometimes they had not even enough. This more constantly happened in the winter than in the summer, for in the summer there was always plenty of milk and always plenty of fruit and vegetables.
When Betty heard that Miss Tredgold was coming to stay she immediately gave Verena notice. This was nothing at all extraordinary, for Betty gave notice whenever anything annoyed her. She never dreamed of acting up to her own words, so that nobody minded Betty’s repeated notices. But on the morning of the day when Miss Tredgold was expected, Betty told nurse that she was about to give a real, earnest notice at last.
“I am going,” she said. “I go this day month. I march out of this house, and never come back—no, not even if a dook was to conduct me to the hymeneal altar.”
Betty was always great on the subject of dukes and marquises. She was seldom so low in health as to condescend to a “hearl,” and there had even been a moment when she got herself to believe that royalty might aspire to her hand.
“She must be really going,” said Verena when nurse repeated Betty’s speech. “She would not say that about the duke if she was not.”
“You leave her alone,” said nurse. “But she’s dreadful put out, Miss Renny; there’s no doubt of that. I doubt if she’ll cook any dinner for Miss Tredgold.”
Verena, Pauline, and Penelope now rushed round to the kitchen premises. They were nervous, but at the same time they were brave. They must see what Betty intended to do. They burst open the door. The kitchen was not too clean. It was a spacious apartment, which in the days when the old house belonged to rich people was well taken care of, and must have sent forth glorious fires—fires meant to cook noble joints. On the present occasion the fire was dead out; the range looked a dull gray, piles of ashes lying in a forlorn manner at its feet. Betty was sitting at the opposite side of the kitchen, her feet on one chair and her capacious person on another. She was busily engaged devouring the last number of the Family Paper. She had come to a most rousing portion in her story—that part in which the duke marries the governess. Betty was, as she said, all in a twitter to see how matters would end; but just at this crucial moment the girls burst in.
“Betty, do stop reading,” said Verena. “She’s come, Betty.”
“I know,” cried Betty. “I’m not deaf, I suppose. John told me. He brought her, drat him! He says she’s the sort to turn the house topsy-turvy. I’ll have none of her. I won’t alter my ways—no, not a hand’s-turn—for the like of her, and I go this day month.”