Nurse declined to venture out of doors that day, and an interview with Master Mustardseed was impossible, so when lessons were over Philomène went down to the kitchen to help Lilian Augusta grate the chocolate for a pudding. She found her singing to herself, “And now this holy day is drawing to its end.” “But I don’t see that it is so very holy,” reflected Philomène, “and it isn’t anywhere near its end either. Nurse says it is just out of contrariness that Lilian Augusta likes to sing, “The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended” while she is washing up the breakfast things, and “When morning gilds the skies” over the tea-things, but then I think Nurse is sometimes very cross to Lilian Augusta, and perhaps she doesn’t mean all she sings.”
Lilian Augusta and Philomène were good friends, and had quarrelled only twice, once when the first canary had been allowed to make its escape, and another time on Queen Mab’s account. Lilian Augusta had no love for cats, and she was not pleased therefore when after some fruitless advertising it was settled that Queen Mab should become a member of the household. Philomène, bent on making peace, had carried her new pet into the kitchen and had placed it on the table.
“You know, Lilian Augusta,” she said coaxingly, “we really couldn’t have put such a little, little cat out into the street again, could we? Only see how small it is, and who would have fed it?”
“God, I suppose, Miss,” replied Lilian Augusta unmoved, as she measured out the curry-powder. But Philomène would not hear of this.
“Poor Pussy!” she exclaimed resentfully, “poor, poor Pussy!” And snatching up Queen Mab she walked straight out of the kitchen and did not re-visit it that day. Lilian Augusta, however, had grown first indifferent to the white cat, and then fond of it, for Queen Mab had pretty endearing ways, besides which, devotion to Philomène was at all times a passport to the faithful servant’s good opinion.
For several days the steady rain continued; gardeners rejoiced, other people grumbled. Philomène consoled herself with an occasional peep at her tall silver savings-box, in which she now treasured her latchkey. This savings-box of hers was never looked at, for her father wished her to do as she pleased with her pocket-money, and she had therefore chosen it as a hiding-place for the key. On these wet days, when she could not play in the garden, it was a comfort merely to look at the key through the slit in the lid of the box. Towards the end of the week the rain abated, though it did not stop altogether. People were beginning to cheer up all round, excepting, of course, the gardeners, who said that the soil was sodden, and that the rain had brought the slugs.
Nurse laid aside the pinafore she had been making, and shut her work-box with a snap. “I want to get some insertion,” she announced, “the same as is on your other pinafores. I must see if I can match it,”
“Am I to come too, Nurse?” inquired Philomène anxiously.
“I don’t see the necessity, Miss. You had your walk this morning. You had better stay in and meet your father when he comes home, I should say. He might be back within the next hour.”
Philomène breathed more freely. “I would ask Lilian Augusta to do that much shopping for me,” continued Nurse, “but it’s her time off to-day, and what’s more she never can match things, not so much as a bit of binding. I’m sure it’s very good of the Lord to make me as patient as I am with Lilian Augusta every day of my life.”