“And,” continued I, carried away with my subject, and really not hearing her remonstrance—“and, if you please, I’m to have three clean collars a week, and you’re to darn—”
“Frederick Batchelor!” exclaimed Miss Henniker, letting drop what she had in her hand, and stamping her foot with most unwonted animation; “did you hear me order you to hold your tongue? Don’t dare to speak again, sir, till you’re spoken to, or you will be punished.”
This tirade greatly surprised me. I had been quite pleased with myself for remembering all Mrs Hudson’s directions, and so intent on relieving my mind of them, that I had not noticed the growing rage of the middle-aged Henniker. In after years, when this story was told of me, I got the credit of being the only human being, who all by himself, had succeeded in “fetching” the Stonebridge housekeeper. At present, however, I was taken aback by her evident rage, and considered it prudent to give heed to her admonition. The unpacking was presently finished, and the scarlet in the Henniker’s face had gradually toned down to its normal tint, when, turning to me, she silently motioned me to follow her. I did so, along a long passage, in which there were at least two turnings. At the end of this was a door leading into a room containing half a dozen beds. Not a very cheerful room—long and low and badly lighted, with only two washstands, and a rather fusty flavour about the bedclothes. Don’t suppose, at my age, I was critical on such points; but when I take my boy to school, I do not think, with what I know now, I shall put him anywhere where the dormitory is like that of Stonebridge House.
“That,” said Miss Henniker, pointing to one of the beds, “is your bed, and you wash at this washstand.”
“Oh,” said I, again forgetting myself; “you are to be sure my brush and comb—”
“Silence, Batchelor!” once more reiterated Miss Henniker.
From the dormitory I was conducted to the schoolroom, and from the schoolroom to the dining-room, and from the dining-room to the boot-room, and my duties were explained in each.
It was in the latter apartment that I first made the acquaintance of one of my fellow “troublesome or backwards.”
A biggish boy was adopting the novel expedient for getting on a tight boot of turning his back to the wall and kicking out at it like a horse when I and my conductress entered.
The latter very nearly came in for one of the kicks.