Hereward and Gurth exchanged glances of resigned boredom, but Dreda drummed her heels on the floor, and called aloud with startling emphasis:
“Go on! Go on! Who wants to hear about tablecloth patterns, and licking threads? Keep to your point, if you have a point to stick to! If Rowena’s is going to give you lessons, she’d better begin by teaching you not to be such a bore. You go prosing on and on—”
“I don’t. I’m not. Bore yourself! ’Twas most intrusting!” insisted Maud, stolidly. “They were sort of talking about us all, in a sort of way as if I couldn’t understand, and I understood all the time, and they said we were rejuiced, and I asked you a simple question what it meant. When you’re perlite to other people, other people should be perlite to you in return.”
“All right, Maud, keep calm, keep calm! You reduce a thing by taking something from it. We are reduced because something—a great deal—has been taken away from our income, and what remains is not enough to go round. I expect the second housemaid will be sent packing, and you will have to make the beds.”
Maud squealed with dismay, then with a gleam of shrewdness nodded her head, and prophesied sagely:
“It would be worse for you than me if I did! I’d make them full of crumples. I’d get hold of the ends of the clothes, and Hop them down all together like Mary does when it’s her Sunday out, and she’s in a hurry. Then you’d be in a rage when you got in and your toes stuck out!”
“I’ll make the beds!” announced Dreda, graciously. “I think all girls ought to learn to be domestic, and there’s a real art in making beds. I’ve often thought how much better I could do it than any servant we have had. It’s the trained intellect, I suppose. (I do hate you, Rowena, when you sneer like that!) F’rinstance—I like my blankets just up to my chin, and if I tell Mary ten times a day, it’s always the same—she doubles them down till you are all hunkley round the neck. Then that leaves less to tuck in at the bottom, and if you have a nightmare and kick, there you are with your feet sticking out in the cold, and have to get up and tuck them in, when you want to sleep! And I can’t endure creases. I like the under sheet stretched as tight as tight. Everyone likes a bed made in a special way, and it ought to be done. Think of the time one spends in bed! A third of one’s life. It’s a shame not to be comfortable. I should be an expert in bed-making. I’d keep a book to remind me of everyone’s special fancies—”
“And lose it the second day! Play all the experiments you like, but leave my room alone. I want no expert. The ordinary common or garden housemaid is good enough for me,” said Hereward, cruelly.
Dreda reflected sadly that a prophet was not a prophet in her own country, but she was too much fired with the new idea to relinquish it without a trial. Besides, hidden in her heart lay the reviving thought: “If I could prove that I could be of use in the house, perhaps they’d let me stay! I know quite enough lessons as it is!”
The first two nights after hearing of the changed arrangements for her own education Dreda had cried herself to sleep, and had even succeeded—with a little difficulty—in squeezing out a few tears as she dressed in the morning, or what was the use of breaking your heart if no one were the wiser, or pitied you for your pathetic looks? By the third morning, however, her facile nature had adapted itself to the inevitable. She was tired of being in the dumps, and reflected that with a little diplomacy she would be able to “manage” the school governesses as cleverly as she had done the Spider before them, while the Currant Buns looked meek, poor-spirited creatures, who would like nothing better than to be ruled. “I’ll teach them!” prophesied Dreda darkly, and the word was used in no educational sense.