The Three Miss Kings. Ada Cambridge
moved to and fro about the now sun-flooded room. Patty was busy in her dairy churning, with a number of her pets round the door, hustling each other to get at the milk dish set down for their breakfast – the magpies tugging at the cats and kittens by ears and tail, and the cats and kittens cuffing the magpies smartly. Eleanor, singing her German ballads still, was hard at work in the kitchen, baking delicate loaves for breakfast, and attending to kitchen matters generally. The elder sister's office on this occasion was to let out and feed the fowls, to sweep and dust, and to prepare the table for their morning meal. Never since they had grown out of childhood had they known the sensation of being waited upon by a servant, and as yet their system of education had been such that they did not know what the word "menial" meant. To be together with no one to interfere with them, and independent of everybody but themselves, was a habit whose origin was too remote for inquiry, and that had become a second nature and a settled theory of life – a sort of instinct of pride and modesty, moreover, though an instinct too natural to be aware of its own existence.
When the little loaves were done and the big ones put in the oven, Eleanor fetched a towel, donned a broad hat, and, passing out at the front of the house, ran lightly down the steep track on the face of the cliff to their bath-house on the beach – a little closet of rough slabs built in the rock above high water; whence she presently emerged in a scanty flannel garment, with her slender white limbs bare, and flung herself like a mermaid into the sea. There were sharks in that bay sometimes, and there were devil-fish too (Sam Dunn had spread one out, star-wise, on a big boulder close by, and it lay there still, with its horrible arms dangling from its hideous bag of a body, to be a warning to these venturesome young ladies, who, he fully expected, would be "et up" some day like little flies by a spider); but they found their safety in the perfect transparency of the water, coming in from the great pure ocean to the unsullied rocks, and kept a wary watch for danger. While Eleanor was disporting herself, Patty joined her, and after Patty, Elizabeth; and one by one they came up, glowing and dripping, like – no, I won't be tempted to make that familiar classical comparison – like nothing better than themselves for artistic purposes. As Elizabeth, who was the last to leave the water, walked up the short flight of steps to her little dressing closet, straight and stately, with her full throat and bust and her nobly shaped limbs, she was the very model that sculptors dream of and hunt for (as many more might be, if brought up as she had been), but seldom are fortunate enough to find. In her gown and leather belt, her beauty of figure, of course, was not so obvious: the raiment of civilisation, however simple, levelled it from the standard of Greek art to that of conventional comparison with other dressed-up women – by which, it must be confessed, she suffered.
Having assumed this raiment, she followed her sisters up the cliff path to the house; and there she found them talking volubly with Mrs. Dunn, who had brought them, with Sam's best respects, a freshly caught schnapper for their breakfast. Mrs. Dunn was their nearest neighbour, their only help in domestic emergencies, and of late days their devoted and confidential friend. Sam, her husband, had for some years been a ministering angel in the back yard, a purveyor of firewood and mutton, a killer of pigs, and so on; and he also had taken the orphan girls under his protection, so far as he could, since they had been "left."
"Look at this!" cried Eleanor, holding it up – it took both hands to hold it, for it weighed about a dozen pounds; "did you ever see such a fish, Elizabeth? Breakfast indeed! Yes, we'll have it to breakfast to-day and to-morrow too, and for dinner and tea and supper. Oh, how stupid Sam is! Why didn't he send it to market? Why didn't he take it down to the steamer? He's not a man of business a bit, Mrs. Dunn – he'll never make his fortune this way. Get the pan for me, Patty, and set the fat boiling. We'll fry a bit this very minute, and you shall stay and help us to eat it, Mrs. Dunn."
"Oh, my dear Miss Nelly – "
"Elizabeth, take charge of her, and don't let her go. Don't listen to her. We have not seen her for three whole days, and we want her to tell us about the furniture. Keep her safe, and Patty and I will have breakfast ready in a minute."
And in a short time the slice of schnapper was steaming on the table – a most simply appointed breakfast table, but very clean and dainty in its simplicity – and Mrs. Dunn sat down with her young protégées, and sipped her tea and gave them matronly advice, with much enjoyment of the situation.
Her advice was excellent, and amounted to this – "Don't you go for to take a stick o' that there furniture out o' the place." They were to have an auction, she said; and go to Melbourne with the proceeds in their pockets. Hawkins would be glad o' the beds, perhaps, with his large family; as Mrs. Hawkins had a lovely suite in green rep, she wouldn't look at the rest o' the things, which, though very comf'able, no doubt – very nice indeed, my dears – were not what ladies and gentlemen had in their houses now-a-days. "As for that there bureau" – pointing to it with her teaspoon – "if you set that up in a Melbourne parlour, why, you'd just have all your friends laughing at you."
The girls looked around the room with quick eyes, and then looked at each other with half-grave and half amused dismay. Patty spoke up with her usual promptness.
"It doesn't matter in the least to us what other people like to have in their houses," said she. "And that bureau, as it happens, is very valuable, Mrs. Dunn: it belonged to one of the governors before we had it, and Mr. Brion says there is no such cabinet work in these days. He says it was made in France more than a hundred years ago."
"Yes, my dear. So you might say that there was no such stuff now-a-days as what them old gowns was made of, that your poor ma wore when she was a girl. But you wouldn't go for to wear them old gowns now. I daresay the bureau was a grand piece o' furniture once, but it's out o' fashion now, and when a thing is out o' fashion it isn't worth anything. Sell it to Mr. Brion if you can; it would be a fine thing for a lawyer's office, with all them little shelves and drawers. He might give you a five-pound note for it, as he's a friend like, and you could buy a handsome new cedar chiffonnier for that."
"Mrs. Dunn," said Eleanor, rising to replenish the worthy matron's plate, with Patty's new butter and her own new bread, "we are not going to sell that bureau – no, not to anybody. It has associations, don't you understand? – and also a set of locks that no burglar could pick if he tried ever so. We are not going to sell our bureau – nor our piano – "
"Oh, but, my dear Miss Nelly – "
"My dear Mrs. Dunn, it cost ninety guineas, I do assure you, only five years ago, and it is as modern and fashionable as heart could wish."
"Fashionable! why, it might as well be a cupboard bedstead, in that there common wood. Mrs. Hawkins gave only fifty pounds for hers, and it is real walnut and carved beautiful."
"We are not going to sell that piano, my dear woman." Though Nelly appeared to wait meekly upon her elder sisters' judgment, it often happened that she decided a question that was put before them in this prompt way. "And I'll tell you for why," she continued playfully. "You shut your eyes for five minutes – wait, I'll tie my handkerchief over them" – and she deftly blindfolded the old woman, whose stout frame shook with honest giggles of enjoyment at this manifestation of Miss Nelly's fun. "Now," said Nelly, "don't laugh – don't remember that you are here with us, or that there is such a thing as a cupboard bedstead in the world. Imagine that you are floating down the Rhine on a moonlight night – no, by the way, imagine that you are in a drawing-room in Melbourne, furnished with a lovely green rep suite, and a handsome new cedar chiffonnier, and a carved walnut piano – and that a beautiful, fashionable lady, with scent on her pocket-handkerchief, is sitting at that piano. And – and listen for a minute."
Whereupon, lifting her hands from the old woman's shoulders, she crossed the room, opened the piano noiselessly, and began to play her favourite German airs – the songs of the people, that seem so much sweeter and more pathetic and poetic than the songs of any other people – mixing two or three of them together and rendering them with a touch and expression that worked like a spell of enchantment upon them all. Elizabeth sat back in her chair and lost herself in the visions that appeared to her on the ceiling. Patty spread her arms over the table and leaned towards the piano, breathing a soft accompaniment of German words in tender, sighing undertones, while her warm pulses throbbed and her eyes brightened with the unconscious passion that was stirred in her fervent soul. Even the weather-beaten old