“The trunk is strapped, Nichola,” said I firmly.
“You needn’t to hev done that,” she grunted graciously.
We passed her in guilty silence.
“If only there is actually a chance to wear the gown,” I confided to Pelleas on the train that afternoon, “it will make it all right to have taken it.”
“What a shocking principle, Etarre,” returned Pelleas, quite as if he had not helped.
We were met at the Paddington station by something which Cousin Diantha called “the rig.” It was four-seated and had flying canvas sides which seemed to billow it on its way. From an opening in the canvas Cousin Diantha herself thrust out a red mitten as the bony driver was conducting us across the platform. Our Cousin Diantha Bethune is the mince-pie-and-plum-pudding branch of our family. We can never think of her without recollecting her pantry and her oven. And whereas some women wear always the air of having just dressed several children or written letters or been shopping, Cousin Diantha seems to have been caught red-handed at slicing and kneading and to be away from those processes under protest. She never reads a book without seeming to turn the leaves with a cook knife and I think her gowns must all be made with “apron fronts.”
“Ain’t this old times though?” she cried, opening her arms to me, “ain’t it? Etarre, you set here by me. Pelleas can set front with Hiram there. My!”
“The rig” rocked up the dingy village street with us, its only passengers, buttoned securely within its canvas sails so that I could see Paddington before us like an aureole about the head of Pelleas. But if a grate fire had been a-light in that shabby interior it could have cheered us no more than did Cousin Diantha’s ruddy face and scarlet mittens. She gave us news of the farm that teemed with her offices of spicing and frosting; and by the time we reached her door we were already thinking in terms of viands and ingredients.
“What a nice little, white little room,” said Pelleas for example, immediately we had set our lamp on our bureau. “The ceiling looks like a lemon pie.” Verily are there not kitchen-cupboard houses whose carpets resemble fruit jelly and whose bookcases suggest different kinds of dessert?
Cousin Diantha was bustling down the stairs. She never walked as others do but she seemed to be always hurrying for fear, say, that the toast was burning.