Johnny Ludlow, Second Series

by Mrs. Henry Wood

The Sankers’ was a funny household, and we pitched down amongst them without ceremony on either side. The house was at the corner of an open road, not very far from the cathedral. It was a commodious house as to size; but all the rooms were in an everlasting litter, so that you could never find a chair to sit down on. The captain was good-humoured always, going in and out a hundred times a day. There seemed to be no fixed hour for meals, and sometimes no meals to eat: Mrs. Sanker would forget to order them. She was a little lady, who went about as if she were dreaming, in a white petticoat and loose buff jacket; or else she’d be sitting aloft in the turret, darning stockings and saying poetry. She was the least excitable person I ever knew; all events, good and bad, she took as a matter of course: had the house caught fire she would have looked on quietly—as Nero did when Rome was burning. Why they called the room the turret did not appear. It had a great high beam running through it on the floor: and Mrs. Sanker would sit on that, reading poetry to us or telling her dreams, her light hair all down.

At seven o’clock the boys had to be in school. Being summer weather, that was no hardship. At nine they came in again with a rush, wild for breakfast. If Mrs. Sanker was not down to give it them, the four boys would begin and eat up the piles of bread-and-butter; upon which Hetta Sanker would call them tigers, and go to the kitchen to tell the maids to cut more. Which was the cook of the two servants and which the housemaid, they did not themselves seem to know: both did the work indiscriminately. Breakfast over, the boys went out again, Tod and I with them. At ten they must be in school. At one they came home to dinner; it might be ready, or it might not: if not, they’d go in and polish off anything cold that might be in the larder. It didn’t seem to spoil their dinners. Afternoon school again until four o’clock; and then at liberty for good. Tea was at any time; a scrambling sort of meal that stayed on the table for hours, and was taken just as we chanced to go in for it. Jam and boiled eggs would be on the table, with the loaf and butter ad libitum. Sometimes toast and dripping, and there used to be a scuffle for that. As to dinner, when Mrs. Sanker forgot it, the servants would bring in a big dish of poached eggs, and we made it up with bread-and-cheese. Or Dan or Toby would be sent tearing off to High Street for a lot of penny pork-pies and apple-tarts. At night we had prayers, which the captain read.

Now I dare say that to people accustomed to a domestic life like clock-work, this would have been unbearable. I thought it delightful; as did Tod. It was like a perpetual picnic. But it was from one of these dinnerless episodes we found out that Captain Sanker had a temper. Generally speaking, he took disasters with equanimity.

It was on a Thursday. We were to have had four ducks for dinner, which the captain had bought at market the day before. Fine ducks that he was proud of: he carried them home himself, and brought them into the parlour to show us. On this day, Thursday, Tod and I had been into the Town Hall in the morning, listening to a trial before the magistrates—some fellow who had stolen his neighbour’s clothes-props and cut them up for firewood. We reached home just as the boys and their books did, as hungry as they were. There was no cloth laid, and Fred shouted out for Biddy, asking whether we were to dine to-day or to-morrow. Biddy heard, and came rushing in with the cloth and knife-tray.

“What’s for dinner besides the four ducks?” asked Dan. “Any pudding? Have you put plenty of stuffing?”

“Indeed then, and I don’t think there’s much for dinner,” replied Biddy. “I’ve been in the turret with the missis all the morning, helping to stuff a pillow.”

She laid the cloth, and Mrs. Sanker came mooning down in the short white petticoat and buff jacket, darning a sock of Dan’s. The dreadful truth came out—busy over beds and pillows, nobody had thought of dinner, and the ducks were hanging in the larder, uncooked. Before speechless tongues could find words, Captain Sanker came in, bringing his friend Dr. Teal to taste the ducks. All the Teals were as intimate at the house as we were. Years before, when the captain was a middy, Dr. Teal had been assistant-surgeon on the same ship.

“They’ve a cold dinner at Teal’s to-day,” said the captain to his wife, as she was shaking hands with the doctor, “so he has come to share ours. Fine ducks they are, Teal!”

Then the news had to be told. The ducks were not cooked: dinner altogether had been forgotten.