The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [128]
Miss Mullen laughed approvingly. “There’s carrots in plenty; and see here, Norry, you might give her a jam dumpling—use the gooseberry jam that’s going bad. I’ve noticed meself that the child isn’t eating, and it won’t do to have the people saying we’re starving her.”
“Whoever’ll say that, he wasn’t looking at me yestherday, and I makin’ the cake for herself and Misther Dysart! Eight eggs, an’ a cupful of sugar and a cupful of butther, and God knows what more went in it, an’ the half of me day gone bating it, and afther all they left it afther thim!”
“And whose fault was that but your own for not sending it up in time?” rejoined Charlotte, her voice sharpening at once to vociferative argument; “Miss Francie told me that Mr. Dysart was forced to go without his tea.”
“Late or early I’m thinkin’ thim didn’t ax it nor want it,” replied Norry, issuing from the larder with a basketful of crumpled linen in her arms, and a visage of the utmost sourness; “there’s your clothes for ye now, that was waitin’ on me yestherday to iron them, in place of makin’ cakes.”
She got a bowl of water and began to sprinkle the clothes and roll them up tightly, preparatory to ironing them, her ill-temper imparting to the process the air of whipping a legion of children and putting them to bed. Charlotte came over to the table and, resting her hands on it, watched Norry for a few seconds in silence.
“What makes you say they didn’t want anything to eat?” she asked; “was Miss Francie ill, or was anything the matter with her?”
“How do I know what ailed her?” replied Norry, pounding a pillow-case with her fist before putting it away; “I have somethin’ to do besides follyin’ her or mindin’ her.”
“Then what are ye talking about?”
“Ye’d betther ax thim that knows. ‘Twas Louisa seen her within in the dhrawn’-room, an’ whatever was on her she was cryin’; but, sure, Louisa tells lies as fast as a pig’d gallop.”
“What did she say?” Charlotte darted the question at Norry as a dog snaps at a piece of meat.
“Then she said plinty, an’ ‘tis she that’s able. If ye told that one a thing and locked the doore on her the way she couldn’t tell it agin, she’d bawl it up the chimbley.”
“Where’s Louisa?” interrupted Charlotte impatiently.
“Meself can tell ye as good as Louisa,” said Norry instantly taking offence; “she landed into the dhrawn-room with the tay, and there was Miss Francie sittin’ on the sofa and her handkerchief in her eyes, and Misther Dysart beyond in the windy and not a word nor a stir out of him, only with his eyes shtuck out in the garden, an’ she cryin’ always.”
“Psha! Louisa’s a fool! How does she know Miss Francie was cryin’? I’ll bet a shillin’ ‘twas only blowing her nose she was.”
Norry had by this time spread a ragged blanket on the table, and, snatching up the tongs, she picked out of the heart of the fire a red-hot heater and thrust it into a box-iron with unnecessary violence.
“An’ why wouldn’t she cry? Wasn’t I listenin’ to her cryin’ in her room lasht night an’ I goin’ up to bed?” She banged the iron down on the table and began to rub it to and fro on the blanket. “But what use is it to cry, even if ye dhragged the hair out of yer head? Ye might as well be singin’ an’ dancin’.”
She flung up her head, and stared across the kitchen under the wisps of hair that hung over her unseeing eyes with such an expression as Deborah the Prophetess might have worn. Charlotte gave a grunt of contempt, and picking Susan up from the bar of the table, she put him on her shoulder and walked out of the kitchen.
Francie had been since breakfast sitting by the window of the dining-room, engaged in the cheerless task of darning a stocking on a soda-water bottle. Mending stockings was not an art that she excelled in; she could trim a hat or cut out a dress, but the dark, unremunerative toil of mending stockings was as distasteful to her as stone-breaking to a tramp, and the simile might