I gaze at the purchase with the amazement expected of me, and the chair itself crinkles and shudders to hear what it went for (or is it merely chuckling at her?). 'And the man said it cost himself five shillings,' my mother continues exultantly. You would have thought her the hardest person had not a knock on the wall summoned us about this time to my sister's side. Though in bed she has been listening, and this is what she has to say, in a voice that makes my mother very indignant, 'You drive a bargain! I'm thinking ten shillings was nearer what you paid.'
'Four shillings to a penny!' says my mother.
'I daresay,' says my sister; 'but after you paid him the money I heard you in the little bedroom press. What were you doing there?'
My mother winces. 'I may have given him a present of an old topcoat,' she falters. 'He looked ill-happit. But that was after I made the bargain.'
'Were there bairns in the cart?'
'There might have been a bit lassie in the cart.'
'I thought as much. What did you give her? I heard you in the pantry.'
'Four shillings was what I got that chair for,' replies my mother firmly. If I don't interfere there will be a coldness between them for at least a minute. 'There is blood on your finger,' I say to my mother.
'So there is,' she says, concealing her hand.
'Blood!' exclaims my sister anxiously, and then with a cry of triumph, 'I warrant it's jelly. You gave that lassie one of the jelly cans!'
The Glasgow waiter brings up tea, and presently my sister is able to rise, and after a sharp fight I am expelled from the kitchen.
The last thing I do as maid of all work is to lug upstairs the clothes-basket which has just arrived with the mangling. Now there is delicious linen for my mother to finger; there was always rapture on her face when the clothes-basket came in; it never failed to make her once more the active genius of the house. I may leave her now with her sheets and collars and napkins and fronts.
Indeed, she probably orders me to go. A son is all very well, but suppose he were to tread on that counterpane!
My sister is but and I am ben - I mean she is in the east end and I am in the west - tuts, tuts! let us get at the English of this by striving: she is in the kitchen and I am at my desk in the parlour.
I hope I may not be disturbed, for to-night I must make my hero say 'Darling,' and it needs both privacy and concentration. In a word, let me admit (though I should like to beat about the bush) that I have sat down to a love-chapter. Too long has it been avoided, Albert has called Marion 'dear' only as yet (between you and me these are not their real names), but though the public will probably read the word without blinking, it went off in my hands with a bang. They tell me - the Sassenach tell me - that in time I shall be able without a blush to make Albert say 'darling,' and even gather her up in his arms, but I begin to doubt it; the moment sees me as shy as ever; I still find it advisable to lock the door, and then - no witness save the dog - I 'do' it dourly with my teeth clenched, while the dog retreats into the far corner and moans.
The bolder Englishman (I am told) will write a love-chapter and then go out, quite coolly, to dinner, but such goings on are contrary to the Scotch nature; even the great novelists dared not.
Conceive Mr. Stevenson left alone with a hero, a heroine, and a proposal impending (he does not know where to look). Sir Walter in the same circumstances gets out of the room by making his love-scenes take place between the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next, but he could afford to do anything, and the small fry must e'en to their task, moan the dog as he may. So I have yoked to mine when, enter my mother, looking wistful.
'I suppose you are terrible thrang,' she says.
'Well, I am rather busy, but - what is it you want me to do?'
'It would be a shame to ask you.'
'Still, ask me.'
'I am so terrified they may be filed.'
'You want me to - ?'
'If you would just come up, and help me to fold the sheets!'
The sheets are folded and I return to Albert. I lock the door, and at last I am bringing my hero forward nicely (my knee in the small of his back), when this startling question is shot by my sister through the key-hole-
'Where did you put the carrot-grater?'
It will all have to be done over again if I let Albert go for a moment, so, gripping him hard, I shout indignantly that I have not seen the carrot-grater.
'Then what did you grate the carrots on?' asks the voice, and the door-handle is shaken just as I shake Albert.
'On a broken cup,' I reply with surprising readiness, and I get to work again but am less engrossed, for a conviction grows on me that I put the carrot-grater in the drawer of the sewing-machine.
I am wondering whether I should confess or brazen it out, when I hear my sister going hurriedly upstairs. I have a presentiment that she has gone to talk about me, and I basely open my door and listen.
'Just look at that, mother!'
'Is it a dish-cloth?'
'That's what it is now.'
'Losh behears! it's one of the new table-napkins.'
'That's what it was. He has been polishing the kitchen grate with it!'
(I remember!)
'Woe's me! That is what comes of his not letting me budge from this room. O, it is a watery Sabbath when men take to doing women's work!'
'It defies the face of clay, mother, to fathom what makes him so senseless.'
'Oh, it's that weary writing.'
'And the worst of it is he will talk to-morrow as if he had done wonders.'
'That's the way with the whole clanjam-fray of them.'
'Yes, but as usual you will humour him, mother.'
'Oh, well, it pleases him, you see,' says my mother, 'and we can have our laugh when his door's shut.'
'He is most terribly handless.'
'He is all that, but, poor soul, he does his best.'
