“Yes, but she also had a sensational novel.”
Arminell laughed again. “I am afraid the education she has received has garnished her head much in the same fashion as she has garnished the rabbit, several good things jumbled together, making an unpalatable whole. I will go and see what can be done.”
“I have given the girl notice.”
“Surely not, Mrs. Welsh. She has but just come to town.”
“I spoke sharply to her, and girls now-a-days will not bear a word. She flew out at me and said she would not remain another hour in the house. Girls give themselves such airs. She knows my extremity, how long I have been without a cook.”
Arminell descended to the kitchen, but Thomasine was not there. The boiled rabbit stood on the table crowned with onion sauce and crimson jelly. Near it lay, wide open, a book, not so thick as Mrs. Warne’s Cookery Manual, and Arminell stooped to look at it. The book was Gaboriau’s “Gilded Clique,” much stained and cockled, as if it had been wet through, and then dried. Arminell turned it over; it was her own copy, which she had flung from her when in the Owl’s Nest, to arouse and arrest the attention of Captain Saltren. She could not doubt that it was the identical book, for her name was pencilled on it, and the water had not effaced the pencil scrawl. She did not know, what was the fact, that the book had undergone two immersions, and had twice been recovered by Patience, and that on the last occasion she had passed it on to her daughter.
Arminell stood turning over the disfigured volume, speculating on how it had come into Thomasine’s hands, and thinking of the occasion when she had last read it; and so thinking, for a moment she forgot the rabbit with its incongruous garnishment, and why she had descended to the kitchen. She was roused from her reverie by the maid-of-all-work coming in excitedly.
“Oh my, miss! What do you think? Thomasine has flown out at missus, and packed up her things in a bundle, and gone.”
“Thomasine gone!”
“Lawk, miss! She wouldn’t stand no nonsense, she said; and if the missus didn’t like her cooking she might cook for herself. She wouldn’t stay. Thomasine had a flaming temper; it’s the way of them red-headed girls.”