“It has been very pleasant work,” she said. “I am sorry it is over. But your aunt has promised me some more work, Miss Merivale. I am to go down to Woodcote again on Thursday.”
Rose was surprised, and she could not help showing it. “You went yesterday, didn’t you?” she said rather stiffly. “It is a long way for you to go.”
“I am very glad to go,” Rhoda answered. She did not tell Rose she had spent the day at Woodcote; something in Rose’s manner checked her. But she did not begin her writing at once. Rose had taken up the cookery book again, and was bending puzzled brows over it. Rhoda watched her for a moment, her eyes full of admiration. Miss Desborough was pretty, but there was not a soft line in her face. Rose looked a child still for all her womanly height. Rhoda said to herself that she must be much younger than her brother. It was easy to see that they were brother and sister. Rose had just the same straight brow she had noticed in him yesterday, and her eyebrows, like his, were a shade or two darker than her hair.
“Would you let me see if I could help you, Miss Merivale?” Rhoda said, after a moment. “I did all the cooking at home before we came to England.”
But Rose shut up her book. “Pauline will scold again if I don’t carry all this away,” she said, with a laugh. “And I mean to have some cookery lessons, if I can get them. But Woodcote is so far from everywhere. It is like being buried alive.”
Rhoda, who had known what it was to live for years fifty miles from a town, did not know how to answer this. And Rose, angry with herself for saying so much to Miss Sampson, caught up the pastry board and rolling-pin and retreated to the kitchen. She came back in a few moments with her apron off, and found Rhoda busy at work, and Pauline in a low chair by the fire with her hands clasped round her knees. Pauline had changed her outdoor dress for an odd, picturesque frock of sage green Liberty serge, touched with yellow. She had fastened some daffodils in her belt, and looked like an aesthetic picture of Spring.
“Arrange my daffodils for me, there is a good little Rose,” she said, smiling lazily at Rose as she entered. “The brown pots, not the blue ones. Now Clare is going to her native fens, I mean this room to be a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. How good it will be to get rid of the click of that typewriter!”
“Don’t say that to Clare,” laughed Rose, as she brought the brown pots to the table. “She was telling me this morning it was the thing she would miss most.”
Pauline lifted her dark eyebrows. “Did she really say that? But it is exactly like Clare; she is more a machine herself than a human being. I was very fond of her once, but I have found her trying to live with. They say you never know a woman till you have lived six months with her. Don’t put too many daffodils in one pot, my Rose; they want plenty of room to show themselves.”
Rhoda had finished the work Clare had left for her. She carefully put her papers together, and rose from the table. Pauline looked carelessly round at her. “Ah, are you going, Miss Sampson? Here is the money Miss Desborough left for you. Just write a receipt and leave it on the table, please. You understand that you are not wanted any more, don’t you?”