Lover or Friend

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

'I will help Mollie,' returned Audrey, laying aside her hat. 'Now, Kester, I want to ask you a favour. You will only be in our way here. Will you please take possession of that nice hammock-chair that someone has put outside the window? and we will just fly round, as the Yankee domestics say.'

Audrey spoke with such good-natured decision, with such assurance of being obeyed, that Kester did not even venture on a grumbling remonstrance—the poor fellow was too much accustomed to be set on one side, and to be told that he was no use. But Audrey had no intention of leaving him in idleness.

'By and by, when the room is a little clearer, you can be of the greatest help to us; for you can sit at the table and dust the books in readiness for us to arrange.' And Kester's face brightened up at that.

Audrey was quite in her element. As she often told her mother, she was robust enough for a housemaid. The well-ordered establishment at Woodcote, with its staff of trained domestics and its excellent matron, afforded little scope for her youthful activities. Mrs. Ross was her own housekeeper, and though she had contentedly relinquished her duties to Geraldine for the last few years, she had not yet offered to transfer them to Audrey.

Audrey pretended to be a little hurt at this arrangement, but in reality she was secretly relieved. Her tastes were not sufficiently domestic. She liked better to supplement her mother's duties than to take the entire lead. In her way she was extremely useful. She wrote a great many of the business letters, undertook all the London shopping, and assisted Mrs. Ross in entertaining her numerous visitors, many of whom were the boys' mothers; and though Mrs. Ross still regretted the loss of her elder daughter, and complained that no one could replace Geraldine, she was fully sensible of Audrey's efficiency and good-humoured and ready help.

'Audrey is as good as gold, and does all I want her to do,' she said to Geraldine, when the latter had questioned her very closely on the subject.

It was no trouble to Audrey to dash off half a dozen letters before post-time, or to drive into Sittingbourne to meet a batch of boys' relatives. She was naturally active, and hated an idle moment; but no work suited her so well as this Herculean task of evoking order out of the Blake chaos. Molly was so charmed with her energy, so fired by her example, that she worked like a dozen Mollies. The books were soon unpacked and on the table; then Biddy was called in to clear away the straw and hampers, and to have a grand sweep. Nothing more could be done until this had been carried out, so they left Biddy to revel in dust and tea-leaves, while they turned out another hamper or two in the kitchen; for in the course of their labours Mollie had confided to Audrey that certain indispensable articles were still missing.

'The best thing would be to get rid of as many of the hampers as possible,' replied Audrey; 'they are only in the way; let us pack them up in the yard, and then one can have room to move.'

When Biddy had finished her labours and all the dirt had been removed, Kester hobbled in willingly to dust the books, and Audrey and Mollie arranged them on the shelves. There were not so very many, but they were all well and carefully chosen—Greek and Latin authors, all Carlyle's and Emerson's works, a few books of history and philosophy, the principal poets, and some standard works of fiction: Dickens, Thackeray, and Sir Walter Scott—the latter bound very handsomely. Audrey felt sure, as she placed the books on the shelves, that this little library was collected by a great deal of self-denial and effort. The young student had probably little money to spare. With the exception of Sir Walter Scott and Thackeray, none of the books were handsomely bound; that they were well read was obvious, for a volume of Browning's poems happening to fall from her hand, Audrey could see profuse pencil-marks, and one philosophical book had copious notes on the margin.

'They are all Cyril's books,' observed Mollie, unconsciously answering Audrey's thought. 'Poor Cyril! it is such a trouble to him that he cannot afford to buy more books. When he was at Oxford he used to go without things to get them; he said he would sooner starve than be without books. Is it not sad to be so dreadfully poor, Miss Ross? But I suppose you don't know how it feels. Mamma bought him that lovely edition of Thackeray—oh, and Sir Walter Scott's novels too. Don't you like that binding? it is very expensive. Cyril was so vexed at mamma's spending all that money on him when Kester wanted things, I am afraid he hardly thanked her, and mamma cried about it.'