by Edith Nesbit
“Your affectionate mother,
“ESTELLE ROCHESTER.”
John Rochester read the letter twice before he took up his pen. But, once started, that pen travelled smoothly over several pages of his uncle’s special hand-made paper with the little coat-of-arms in the comer. The pen dealt with the weather, with the writer’s health, with Uncle James’s health, with Uncle James’s journey to Spain, with the object of that journey; and so to the obligation which the writer was under to occupy Uncle James’s house till Uncle James’s return. On the last page, which was the sixth, the pen was driven to say:
“I have thought over all you say about my future. I am not so very sure that you are right about my being so like my father. And perhaps he was not exactly like what you always say of him. Perhaps he said what you say when he was in a temper. People do say the oddest things at such times, don’t they?
“Please remember me most kindly to Miss Antrobus. I am so sorry that I shall not have the pleasure of meeting her again this spring, but I have promised my uncle to guard his books and curios as with my life, so, of course, I am planted here till he returns. I trust Miss Antrobus will have a very pleasant visit — but of course she will, with you, best of mothers.
“You have often talked to me of Cedar Court. I went all over it the other day. It is a most delightful place, just as you said, and my visit was full of interest. The furniture, the garden — everything — quite different from anything I have ever seen before. I hope to go there again and again. These old houses well repay repeated visits.
With fondest love, I am, dear mother, your loving son,
“JOHN.”
CHAPTER IX
“And six is seventy-nine,” observed Lucilla; “seventy-nine pence — how many shillings, and what pence?”
Jane told her, and waited patiently till the agony of the shillings column had given place to the easy sparseness of the pounds. It was Saturday night, and they were “making up the books.”
“I make it three pounds seventeen and fivepence,” Lucilla announced at last. “See what you make it.” Jane made it four pounds two and a penny. So then they added it all up again, the two of them together, and the total was four pounds three shillings and fourpence.
“This is too much!” said Jane desperately.
“Yes,” said Lucilla, “much too much!”
“I mean it’s too silly. Here we’ve been a thousand years at school, and you took an arithmetic prize when you were nine..
(“‘Sundays at Encombe,’” put in Lucilla).
“... And yet we can’t add up six little sums of pounds, shillings, and pence and then add the totals together and get them right.”
“We don’t know that we haven’t got them right. One of the answers may be right for anything we know. It’s so different doing it with real money,” said Lucilla, fingering the little piles of coin on the table of the garden room, where, with two candles in brass candlesticks to light them, they were seeking to find some relation between the coins — so easily counted — and the figures referring to these same coins which all through the week they had laboriously pencilled in an exercise-book.
“I think it’s the garden distracts us,” said Jane, looking towards the open window, beyond which lay lawn and cedars bathed in moonlight and soft spring air.
“Let’s shut the shutters or else take everything home,” Lucilla suggested. “It’s awfully late, and I’m very, very hungry.”
“Nonsense — stick to it! Not a bite or sup do you get till our figures agree. Oh, I say — we spent nine pence on chocs — that came out of the shop money. And that gipsy who had the wallflowers, she didn’t pay, you remember — that makes a difference of twopence. And did you put down the half-crown we paid the man who swept up the path and tied back the creeper?”
And so the maddening work of the amateur accountants began all over again.
“They ought to have taught us all about this at school,” said Lucilla; “there’s something called ‘striking a balance.’”
“I shouldn’t mind — I feel quite violent enough. I’d strike it fast enough if I could find it. It means when everything adds up to the same as everything else, I think,” Jane added instructively. “Don’t giggle, Lucilla, it wasn’t really funny. You’re faint and hysterical from want of food. Look here — this looks more like it.”
It did, much more like it — so much so that a mere difference of ninepence-halfpenny might have been allowed to assume the disguise of “sundries” so useful in these emergencies. But then Lucilla suddenly remembered that she had put a Bradbury in the first volume of Browning for safety. That made the balance wobble again horribly, and go down on the other side with a surplus of nineteen and twopence-half penny.
“Oh, stop it!” said Lucilla, pushing her hands through her hair. “Let’s get home, and do it after supper. Our brains are reeling with famine. Don’t you know when you’re hungry all your blood rushes to your stomach and your brain’s left high and dry? At least, I think that’s it. What’s that?”
“That” was a footstep on the gravel outside.
“Idiots!” said Jane, and flung a duster over the money. “If it’s a burglar,” she whispered—”well we’ve been asking for it, sitting here with candles, making a show of our money and our unprotectedness.”
“It’s out in the road,” said Lucilla in the same low voice. “It isn’t,” said Jane. And it wasn’t. For the next moment the footstep was heard, not on gravel, but on granite, and the figure of a man blotted out the picture of the moonlit lawn. Jane stood up between the door and the duster-covered table, and said, “What do you want?” rather sharply, and, “ Oh, it’s you!” in tones that were a little flat. She sat down suddenly.
“I thought you were a burglar,” she said. “ Yes — I know we thoroughly deserve that you should be.”
“Well,” said young Mr. Rochester, “I thought that myself the prospect might be tempting to a not thoroughly high-principled passer-by. So I thought you wouldn’t mind my coming in — in the character of watch-dog. May I help you with the shutters? I suppose you’re going to close the shop soon?”
“We have a vow in heaven,” said Jane, “ not to close the shop till the accounts come right.”
“And they never will, you know,” said Lucilla in gentle desperation; “ unless.. she added, with a sudden ray of hope, “ unless you can do sums?”
He could; he did. He brought the sundries to the irreducible minimum of elevenpence. He made the books look balanced, at any rate, and announced the takings for the week at four pounds, six and twopence, a total which had for the young accountants the double charm of comparative magnitude and complete novelty.
Then he helped them to put up the shutters and to lock door and gate. And that was the beginning of Mr. John Rochester’s activities as accountant to the flower business.
“You see,” he pointed out when the girls protested politely, “it’s a positive charity to give me something to come out for. I’m stuck at my uncle’s place till he gets back from Madrid. I’m trying to invent a thing that’s never been invented before — a much more difficult job than you’d think — and I’ve absolutely no one to talk to and nowhere to go. If you wouldn’t mind my looking round now and then to see if I can lend a hand in anything? Please don’t thank me — the thanks will be all the other way if you’ll let me.”
So it was understood that they gratefully would let him. And he saw them and their bag of money to their own door.
“How nice he was this evening,” said Lucilla, as the two friends sat over their cocoa and bananas and bread-and-butter. They took it in turns to keep house. This was Lucilla’s week, and this was an economical day. “So much nicer than the first time.”
“He’s not bad,” Jane admitted.
“He’s awfully nice,” said Lucilla. “ I do think — —”
“Don’t say you think he has such a kind face,” said Jane quickly, “because I won’t bear it. He’s all right, and q
uite nice and friendly and all that. And I hope he’ll keep so. We’ve got our livings to make, and we don’t want young men hanging round, paying attentions and addresses and sighing and dying and upsetting everything. If he likes to be a good chum I don’t mind, but the minute I see any signs of philandering, the least flicker of a sheep’s eye, we’ll drop Mr. Rochester, if you don’t mind.”
“Well,” said Lucilla with firmness, taking a third banana, “ I do think you’re horrid. Can’t a young man be civil to us but you must begin to think things? Why can’t you let things be? It would be time enough to talk like that if he’d shown the faintest signs of anything of the sort. Girls oughtn’t always to be on the look-out for addresses and attentions and so on.”
“Yes, they ought,” Jane insisted; “just as you ought to be always on the look-out for snakes in the grass — I mean if you live in snaky sort of countries. We’ve — got — to — earn — our — living. And when we’ve done that it’ll be time to think about playing at Romeo and Juliet and all that. We’re business girls — and I hope your young man will see that we are.”
“He’s not my young man,” Lucilla retorted placidly; “and the poor dear hasn’t shown the faintest sign of Romeoishness, anyhow.”
“He’d better not,” said Jane fiercely.
“What would you do?” Lucilla asked, her pretty eyes shining with a mild curiosity above her fourth banana. “He’d soon see what I’d do,” Jane retorted. “But there — perhaps I do but wrong the lad. I daresay it’s only in books that a young man can never do a friendly act for a young woman without its meaning some silly nonsense or other. Perhaps really young men are just as sensible and reasonable as girls are.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Lucilla. “You see, we know very little about them except from books. And in books they have to be loverish, and so do the girls, because they’re all heroes and heroines, of course. But I’ve sometimes thought that real life is most likely quite different from books.”
“You bet it is,” said Jane—”from some books, anyway. Don’t look so pleading, Luce — I’ll promise not to bite his head off if he behaves like a real person. But business girls have to be on their guard against behaving like heroines or allowing other people to behave like heroes. Let’s get to bed. I’m dog-tired and there’s no more cocoa.”
“No more there is,” said Lucilla, looking into the jug with one eye. “Come on then.”
And they went.
Business was very slack on Monday, and still slack, though brightening, on Tuesday. There were not very many flowers in the garden, and cutting and arranging these occupied but a small part of the day. The girls read and talked and sewed and wrote letters during the long intervals between customers. And the gas-green walls, which on Saturday had made a tolerable background for the masses of flowers and the brisk sale for them, formed a poor setting for an almost domestic scene.
“I wish we could get it off,” Lucilla said. “I can’t think how anyone could paint old oak such a colour — or any colour for that matter. Look how lovely the insides of the cupboard doors are. I wish we could get it off. What do you get paint off with?”
They asked Mrs. Doveton, and she answered with unexpected cynicism that the stuff they sell to clean it generally does the trick. “In time,” she added, as one desiring to be fair to an enemy. “If you wanted it off sudden I should soak in soda and scrape.”
There are difficulties about soaking four walls still occupying a vertical position. But our young enthusiasts bought some soda and a paint-brush and painted the door of the corner cupboard with a strong solution of soda. Then they scraped with Lucilla’s palette-knife, and the paint came off — some of it. Some of it, on the other hand, did not come off. The effect was speckled and streaked, the old oak showing through the half vanquished paint like brown mould under thinly-sown new grass.
“How perfectly awful!” said Lucilla. “I do wish we hadn’t.”
“Never regret, never apologise, never explain,” Jane quoted.
“Who said that?”
“I said it. But someone else said it first. Napoleon or Socrates or Machia velli or someone. It does look pretty ghastly,” she owned; “unless we can do something to get the rest of it off we shall have to paint it again.”
“Suppose our landlord comes back from his castle in Spain while it’s looking like that? He’ll turn us out as sure as fate.”
“Paint it with soda again,” said Jane, “and we’ll try again to-morrow.”
This was on the Wednesday, and in the afternoon Mr. Simmons called “to see if the board was holding up.”
“Whatever you been after with that cupboard door?” he asked.
“Trying to get the paint off,” said Jane shortly.
“Don’t you like the colour, miss? I thought it looked so nice and refined myself.”
“We don’t want to be refined,” said Lucilla; “we want to see the colour of the wood.”
“What you tried?”
“Soda — and it’s not taken off half the paint, but all the skin’s off our hands!”
The girls displayed four scarlet paws.
“Dear, dear!” said Simmons, deeply concerned. “Why ever didn’t you ask me? My boss, him that was here the other day, he knows all about chemistry and dyes and engines and dynamite and all sorts. I lay I can get him to give me something to eat off that green paint as if it was caterpillars on a cabbage-plot. You put some honey and lily leaves on them poor hands of yours, and I’ll come along Saturday and see what I can do to the paint. I’ve got a day off then.”
“You are good, Mr. Simmons,” said the two girls in absolute unison.
“Granted,” said Mr. Simmons absently. “Though I can’t see what you wanted to touch it for, myself. But there’s no accounting to be placed on tastes, is there? Good afternoon, I’m sure.”
When the girls reached the shop on Saturday morning they found the shutters down, the glass doors open, and two figures in blue boiler-suits busy with a pail and a step-ladder. The door of the cupboard was a smooth grey-brown. Not a streak of paint remained on it.
“How splendid!” said Jane to Simmons, whose face beamed above the first suit of blue overalls. “Why, it’s you again!” she said, not very graciously, to the wearer of the second suit.
“Yes,” answered Mr. Rochester. “I thought I might as well lend a hand. Try to disguise your annoyance, won’t you? I know I’m only an amateur, but I mean well.”
“There’s no reason why you should,” said Jane.
“On the other hand, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t,” said he. “Don’t be so stony. Only those who have spent lonely weeks waiting for an uncle who fails to return from Madrid can begin to estimate all the possibilities of boredom which life has to offer. Don’t be so bristly, Miss Quested.”
“There’s no reason why you should do this for us, or anything else for that matter,” said Jane. Lucilla had gone out into the garden, and Mr. Simmons was whistlingly at work in the room’s farthest corner.
“I am not doing it for you, if I may say so,” Mr. Rochester said coolly. “I am doing it for Mr. Simmons, whose faith in my omnipotence you surely would not have me lightly shatter. Besides, this is the day for balancing the books. I thought I ought to be here in good time.”
“It’s nine o’clock in the morning,” said Jane. “We balance the books when we’ve shut the shop. At seven to-night.”
“Well, then, I am in good time. I thought I was.”
“You’re talking nonsense!” said Jane, “How you read me! Concealment is at an end. I am talking nonsense. Is that forbidden in the Temple of the Muses?”
“We aren’t Muses,” said Jane.
“I know you aren’t. But if I said the Graces you’d have been cross.”
“I’m cross now,” said Jane. “For goodness’ sake go home and do your inventing and let Mr. Simmons do the paint-scraping.”
“You’re not really cross,” he said; “you only think you are. It�
�s much too fine a day to be really cross on. You’re not cross. You’re disappointed.”
“Disappointed?”
“Yes. You are the princess setting out to seek her fortune, and you want to kill all the giants and ogres yourself — with your own hand and your own trusty sword. Do let me help Simmons to kill this very little green dragon for you — it isn’t really a dragon, it’s only a baby drakeling. And besides...”
Jane had not enough experience to enable her to perceive that he only paused there so that she might ask, “Besides what? “ She asked it.
“Besides — I deserve some slight concession.” He added something which she could only just hear. She would have liked to ask, “What was that you said?” but experience comes quickly and she did not ask it. And really she was almost sure that what he had said was, “I have kept away from you for a week.”
She stood silent.
“Well,” he said, “does the princess relent? May I go on scraping the paint off?”
“Oh, do as you like!” said Jane, and went out into the garden. Again she was not quite sure of his answering words. They certainly sounded like: “I wish I could!”
CHAPTER X
“Look here,” said Jane one morning as they sat in their shop, now almost wholly oak and bearing but few gas-green streaks on its furthest wall, “we’ve been at it now for over three weeks and we haven’t had a single holiday. Here we are, in London, or as good as, and we haven’t seen a picture gallery or a museum. We haven’t seen Madame Tussaud’s or the Thames, except just crossing the bridge that first evening; we haven’t seen the Tower or Westminster Abbey or the Houses of Parliament; we haven’t been to a theatre.”
