'You will neither of you be ready for breakfast, as it is,' I said; 'and if you are not quick you will have none at all, or at least quite cold.'
I nearly ran against the coffee, which Hoskins was just carrying in, as I got to the dining-room door, which would not have been a happy beginning. But I pulled up just in time, and took in good part Hoskins's reminder that it wouldn't do to rush about as if we were in the wide passages at home. Then she went on to tell me what it all made her think of, she was so glad to have remembered.
'It is just like a ship, Miss Ida. I have never been at sea, but I spent a day or two once on board one of the big steamers at Southampton that a cousin of my mother's is stewardess of. Yes, it's that that's been running in my head.'
'It can't have been a very big one, then,' I said, rather pertly, I am afraid. But Hoskins did not see the joke.
'Oh, but it was, Miss Ida,' she went on, after she had placed the coffee-pot in safety. 'The big rooms, saloons, as they call them, were really beautiful, but the passages quite narrow, and the kitchens and pantries so small, you'd wonder they do do any washing-up in them, let alone cooking. Not an inch of space lost, you may say. And as to how they manage in rough weather when everything's atop of the other, it's just wonderful, not that I've any wish to see for myself; the sea's all very well to be beside of, but as for going on it,' and Hoskins shook her head, but said no more. For mamma just then came into the room, and the kind-hearted woman did not want to remind her who was on the sea at the present moment.
We three—mamma and Esmé and I—had made some way with our breakfast before the two lazy ones joined us, Geordie rather shy and ashamed; Denzil eager to explain the whole story of his dream, and to tease poor mamma about his brain and how it was made and what it was like, till I did wish I had not mentioned its existence to him.
I don't remember anything very particularly interesting in the course of the first few days at the Hut, or rather perhaps, everything was so interesting that no one thing stands out very much in my memory or in my diary. I kept a diary in those days, as I daresay you who read this have suspected, otherwise I could not have been so exact about details, though it needs no diary to remind myself of the feeling of it all, of the curious charm of the half gypsy life. Not that it really was nearly as 'gypsy' as we would have liked it to be, or as we thought we would have liked it to be! It was really so comfortable, and we were all so pleased with our own efforts to make it so, and their success, that by the end of a week or ten days we began to long for some adventures.
'A storm,' said Geordie one day,—'a storm at sea. How would that do? Not a very bad one of course, and———'
'No,' I said decidedly, frowning at him to remind him about papa's being on the sea,—'no, that wouldn't do at all. Besides, there never are storms at this time of year. It's past the bad time. No, something more like real gypsies camping near us, and coming to ask us to lend them things, and telling our fortunes.'