Penelope and the Others Part 25

So the time went on, very slowly for Nancy just now, but at last the week ended and Sat.u.r.day came.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

KETURAH.

The house at Easney was merrier and more noisy than it had been for some time on the day of Pennie's return, but the house at Nearminster went back at once to its old gravity and silence. Had it always been so still and quiet? Miss Unity wondered. If so, she had never noticed it until Pennie had come and gone. Now it seemed so strange and unaccustomed that it made her quite restless and unable to settle down to her usual morning employments. She tried them one after another in vain. It was of no use. She could neither add up her accounts, nor read her newspaper, nor do her wool-work with the least satisfaction.

Almost without knowing it she went aimlessly into her bed-room, and from there into the little pink-chintz room which had been Pennie's. Betty had already made it so neat and trim that it looked forlornly empty with no signs of its late owner. So Miss Unity thought at first, but glancing round it she saw that careless Pennie had left her thimble on the table, and one of her dancing shoes in a corner.

Miss Unity picked up the thimble and fitted it absently on to the top of her own finger. How Pennie had disliked sewing, and dancing too, and how very very glad she had been to go home that morning! How she had flung herself upon Nancy and smothered her with kisses; how happy and smiling her face had looked as she drove away from the door, talking so eagerly to her sister that she had almost forgotten to wave a last good-bye to Miss Unity at the window.

"Well, it was natural, I would not have it otherwise," said Miss Unity to herself as she finished her reflections; "it is right that the child should love her home best."

But she sighed as she went back to the sitting-room and took up her work again. Opposite to her was the high-backed chair in which Pennie had spent so many weary hours, bending with a frown over Kettles' garments.

But the chair was empty, and there was something in the way it stood which so annoyed Miss Unity that she pushed it up against the wall almost impatiently. Then her eye fell on a pile of white clothes neatly folded on a side-table. Pennie had finished them all, and Miss Unity had promised that she and Nancy should come over and present them to Kettles before long. From this her thoughts went on to Kettles herself, and Anchor and Hope Alley. At this moment Betty appeared at the door with a face full of woe.

"I've just had an accident, Miss," she said.

Betty's accidents usually meant broken china, but this time it was something worse. She had sprained her wrist badly.

"You must go at once to the doctor, Betty," said Miss Unity, looking nervously at the swollen member; "and, oh dear me! it's your right one isn't it?"

"Yes, Miss, worse luck," said Betty.

"We must have someone in," continued Miss Unity still more nervously; "you ought not to use it, you know, for a long time."

"I don't want no strangers, Miss," said Betty with a darkening face, "they break more than they make. I can make s.h.i.+ft, I daresay, with my left hand."

"Now you know that's quite out of the question, Betty," said her mistress, doing her best to speak severely, "you couldn't lift a saucepan, or even make a bed. You must certainly have someone. Some nice respectable char-woman."

"There's ne'er a one in the town," said Betty, "as you'd like to have in the house. I know what they are--a lazy gossiping set."

Miss Unity rose with decision.

"I shall go and ask Mrs Margetts at the College to tell me of someone trustworthy," she said, "and I do beg, Betty, that you will go at once to the doctor."

But though she spoke with unusual firmness Miss Unity was inwardly very much disturbed, and she quite trembled as she put on her bonnet and started off to see old Nurse. For Betty, like many faithful old servants, was most difficult to manage sometimes. She had ruled Miss Unity's house single-handed so long that she could not endure the idea of help, or "strangers in the kitchen," as she called it. Miss Unity had never dared to suggest such a thing until now, and she felt very doubtful as to its success, for she foresaw little peace in the house for some time to come. Complaints, quarrels, changes, wounded feelings on Betty's part, and so on; a constant worry in the air which would be most distressing to anyone of an orderly and quiet mind. Poor Miss Unity sighed heavily as she reached the College and climbed Nurse's steep staircase.

Nurse was full of sympathy, but before she could bring her mind to the question of charwomen she had to go over all her experience of sprains and what was best for them--how some said this, and some said exactly the opposite, and how she herself, after trying all the remedies, had finally been cured by some stuff which folks called a quack medicine, but she thought none the worse of it for that. Miss Unity sat patiently and politely listening to all this, and at last gently repeated:

"And do you know of a respectable woman, Mrs Margetts, who would come in and help Betty for a time?"

Nurse shook her head. "There's no one, I'm afraid, Miss, not one that Betty would like to have. You see she's rather particular, and if a person isn't _just so_, as one might say, it puts her out."

Miss Unity knew that only too well.

"I must have someone," she said; "you see Betty will be helpless for some time; she can't do much with one hand."

Nurse nodded, and pursed up her lips in deep thought.

"You wouldn't like a little gal, Miss?" she asked suddenly.

"A little girl!" repeated Miss Unity in some dismay.

"I was thinking p'r'aps that it wouldn't put Betty about so much,"

continued Nurse. "You see she could make a girl do things her way where she couldn't order about a grown woman, and really there's some girls of fourteen or so'll do as much work, and do it most as well with someone to look after 'em."

"But," said Miss Unity, "don't they break things dreadfully?"

Nurse laughed. "Why there's all sorts, Miss," she said. "Some are naturally neat-handed and sharp. It's the dull stupid ones that has the heavy hands in general."

"Well," said Miss Unity hesitatingly, "supposing Betty should like the idea--do you know of one who could come?"

She had a sort of feeling that Nurse was thinking of Kettles, so that her answer was hardly a surprise.

"There's the little girl Miss Pennie was so set on. She could come, for her mother's about again now, and a decent woman she is, though she's so badly off."

A month ago the bare idea of having anyone from Anchor and Hope Alley into her house would have been impossible to Miss Unity; but Pennie had made her so familiar with the name and affairs of Kettles, and she had taken so much interest in making her clothes, that it no longer seemed so strange. Still, what would Betty say? A girl out of Anchor and Hope Alley, who had never been in a decent house before! It was surely too bold a step.

"You see, Miss," went on Nurse, "it isn't as if you wanted her to wait on you, or to open the door or such like. All she's got to do is to help Betty below stairs, and to make beds, and so on. She'll soon learn, and I'll be bound she'll answer better than a char-woman."

Miss Unity took her departure with this bold idea becoming more and more fixed in her mind. There was a great deal in what Nurse had said, if she could only induce Betty to look at it in the same way; and above all how delighted Pennie would be, when she next came, to find Kettles not only wearing the clothes she had made; but actually established in the house. It all seemed to fit in so well that Miss Unity gathered courage. She had come out that morning feeling depressed and worried, and as though everything would go wrong; but now, as she turned into the Close, wondering how she should best open the subject to Betty, she was quite stirred and interested.

Betty had come back from the doctor with her arm in a sling. She was to keep it as still as possible, and on no account to try to use it.

"So you see, Betty," said Miss Unity earnestly, "the importance of having someone to help you in your work."

"Yes, Miss," said Betty, with suspicion in every feature, and quite prepared to object to any person her mistress had secured.

"And I have made up my mind," went on Miss Unity, "not to have a char-woman."

"Ho, indeed, Miss!" said Betty, still suspicious.

"I know you object to them," said her mistress, "and Mrs Margetts advises me to try a little girl she knows, who lives near here."

If possible she would avoid the mention of Anchor and Hope Alley.

"It's for you to please yourself, Miss," said Betty stiffly.

"Of course it would be an immense advantage to the girl to be under a competent servant like yourself, for although she's intelligent she has never been in service before. Miss Pennie was very much interested in her," added Miss Unity as an afterthought.

If Betty had a soft corner in her heart for anyone but her mistress it was for Pennie. She did not at all approve of Miss Unity's taking up with these new fancies, but to please Pennie she would put up with a good deal. It was with something approaching a smile that she said:

"Oh, then, it's the little girl out of Anchor and Hope Alley, isn't it, Miss? Her as Miss Pennie made the clothes for and used to call Kettles?"

"Well," said Miss Unity reluctantly, "I am sorry to say she does live there, but Mrs Margetts knows her mother well, and she's a very deserving woman. We sha'n't call the girl Kettles--her name is Keturah.

You'll have to teach her, you know, Betty," she added apologetically.