'Do you mean this?' regarding the article with some disfavour. 'Would it trouble you very much to wash it while I make the tea? I have some nice fresh eggs, which I think they will all enjoy.'
But Biddy only returned a snapping answer that was somewhat unintelligible, and carried out the saucepan with rather a sour face.
'Disagreeable old thing!' thought Audrey, as she made the tea, but she afterwards retracted this hasty judgment.
Biddy was a bad manager, certainly, but she was not without her virtues. She was faithful, and would slave herself to death for those she loved; but she was old for work, and the 'ache,' as she called it, had got into her bones. She had slept on the floor for two nights, and her poor old back was tired, and her head muddled with the confusion and her mistress's fretful fussiness. Biddy could have worked well if any one had told her exactly what to do, but between one order and another—between Mr. Cyril's impatience and Miss Mollie's incapable, youthful zeal—she was just 'moithered,' as she would have said herself.
She brought back the saucepan after a minute, and Audrey boiled the eggs. As she looked down at the hissing, bubbling water, an amused smile stole over her features.
'If only Gage could see me now!' she thought; and then Mollie came in and rummaged in a big basket for teaspoons.
Audrey carried out her teapot in triumph. Mollie had done her work well and tastefully: the snowy cloth was on the table; there were cups and saucers and plates; the butter was ornamented with green leaves, the cakes were in a china basket. Kester was dusting some chairs.
'Doesn't it look nice!' exclaimed Mollie, quite forgetting her shyness. 'How I wish Cyril would come in! He does so love things to be nice—he and Kester are so particular. Mamma!' glancing up at a window above them, 'won't you please to hurry down? May I sit there, Miss Ross? I always pour out the tea, because mamma does not like the trouble, and Kester always sits next to me.'
'Is your mother an invalid, my dear?' asked Audrey, feeling that this must be the case.
'Mamma? Oh no! She has a headache sometimes, but so do I—and Cyril often says the same. I think mamma is strong, really. She can take long walks, and she often sits up late reading or talking to Cyril; but it tries her to do things in the house, she has never been accustomed to it, and putting things to rights in Cyril's room has quite knocked her up.'