The Three Miss Kings. Ada Cambridge
said Eleanor, taking her hands from the keys and shutting up the instrument, with a suddenness that made them jump. "Now I ask you, Mrs. Dunn, as an honest and truthful woman —can you say that that is a piano to be sold?"
"Beautiful, my dear, beautiful – it's like being in heaven to hear the like o' that," the old woman responded warmly, pulling the bandage from her eyes. "But you'd draw music from an old packing case, I do believe." And it was found that Mrs. Dunn was unshaken in her conviction that pianos were valuable in proportion to their external splendour, and their tone sweet and powerful by virtue solely of the skill of the fingers that played upon them. If Mr. King had given ninety guineas for "that there" – about which she thought there must be some mistake – she could only conclude that his rural innocence had been imposed upon by wily city tradesmen.
"Well," said Nelly, who was now busy collecting the crockery on the breakfast table, "we must see if we can't furbish it up, Mrs. Dunn. We can paint a landscape on the front, perhaps, and tie some pink satin ribbons on the handles. Or we might set it behind a curtain, or in a dark corner, where it will be heard and not seen. But keep it we must – both that and the bureau. You would not part with those two things, Elizabeth?"
"My dear," said Elizabeth, "it would grieve me to part with anything."
"But I think," said Patty, "Mrs. Dunn may be right about the other furniture. What would it cost to take all our things to Melbourne, Mrs. Dunn?"
"Twice as much as they are worth, Miss Patty – three times as much. Carriage is awful, whether by sea or land."
"It is a great distance," said Patty, thoughtfully, "and it would be very awkward. We cannot take them with us, for we shall want first to find a place to put them in, and we could not come back to fetch them. I think we had better speak to Mr. Hawkins, Elizabeth, and, if he doesn't want them, have a little auction. We must keep some things, of course; but I am sure Mr. Hawkins would let them stay till we could send for them, or Mr. Brion would house them for us."
"We should feel very free that way, and it would be nice to buy new things," said Eleanor.
"Or we might not have to buy – we might put this money to the other," said Patty. "We might find that we did not like Melbourne, and then we could go to Europe at once without any trouble."
"And take the pianner to Europe along with you?" inquired Mrs. Dunn. "And that there bureau?"
CHAPTER IV.
DEPARTURE
They decided to sell their furniture – with the exception of the piano and the bureau, and sundry treasures that could bestowed away in the latter capacious receptacle; and, on being made acquainted with the fact, the obliging Mr. Hawkins offered to take it as it stood for a lump sum of £50, and his offer was gratefully accepted. Sam Dunn was very wroth over this transaction, for he knew the value of the dairy and kitchen utensils and farm-yard appliances, which went to the new tenant along with the household furniture that Mrs. Dunn, as a candid friend, had disparaged and despised; and he reproached Elizabeth, tenderly, but with tears in his eyes, for having allowed herself to be "done" by not taking Mr. Brion's advice upon the matter, and shook his head over the imminent fate of these three innocent and helpless lambs about to fling themselves into the jaws of the commercial wolves of Melbourne. Elizabeth told him that she did not like to be always teasing Mr. Brion, who had already done all the legal business necessary to put them in possession of their little property, and had refused to take any fee for his trouble; that, as they had nothing more to sell, no buyer could "do" them again; and that, finally, they all thought fifty pounds a great deal of money, and were quite satisfied with their bargain. But Sam, as a practical man, continued to shake his head, and bade her remember him when she was in trouble and in need of a faithful friend – assuring her, with a few strong seafaring oaths (which did not shock her in the least, for they were meant to emphasise the sincerity of his protestations), that she and her sisters should never want, if he knew it, while he had a crust of bread and a breath in his body.
And so they began to pack up. And the fuss and confusion of that occupation – which becomes so irksome when the charm of novelty is past – was full of enjoyment for them all. It would have done the travel-worn cynic good to see them scampering about the house, as lightly as the kittens that frisked after them, carrying armfuls of house linen and other precious chattels to and fro, and prattling the while of their glorious future like so many school children about to pay a first visit to the pantomime. It was almost heartless, Mrs. Dunn thought – dropping in occasionally to see how they were getting on – considering what cause had broken up their home, and that their father had been so recently taken from them that she (Mrs. Dunn) could not bring herself to walk without hesitation into the house, still fancying she should see him sitting in his arm-chair and looking at her with those hard, unsmiling eyes, as if to ask her what business she had there. But Mr. King had been a harsh father, and this is what harsh fathers must expect of children who have never learned how to dissemble for the sake of appearances. They reverenced his memory and held it dear, but he had left them no associations that could sadden them like the sight of their mother's clothes folded away in the long unopened drawers of the wardrobe in her room – the room in which he had slept and died only a few weeks ago.
These precious garments, smelling of lavender, camphor, and sandalwood, were all taken out and looked at, and tenderly smoothed afresh, and laid in a deep drawer of the bureau. There were treasures amongst them of a value that the girls had no idea of – old gowns of faded brocade and embroidered muslin, a yellow-white Indian shawl so soft that it could be drawn through a wedding ring, yellower lace of still more wonderful texture, and fans, and scarfs, and veils, and odds and ends of ancient finery, that would have been worth considerably more than their weight in gold to a modern art collector. But these reminiscences of their mother's far-off girlhood, carefully laid in the bottom of the drawer, were of no account to them compared with the half-worn gowns of cheap stuff and cotton – still showing the print of her throat and arms – that were spread so reverently on the top of them; and compared with the numerous other memorials of her last days – her workbox, with its unfinished bit of needlework, and scissors and thimble, and tapes and cottons, just as she had left it – her Prayer-Book and Bible – her favourite cup, from which she drank her morning tea – her shabby velvet slippers, her stiff-fingered gardening gloves – all the relics that her children had cherished of the daily, homely life that they had been privileged to share with her; the bestowal of which was carried on in silence, or with tearful whispers, while all the pets were locked out of the room, as if it had been a religious function. When this drawer was closed, and they had refreshed their saddened spirits with a long walk, they set themselves with light hearts to fill the remainder of the many shelves and niches of the bureau with piles of books and music, painting materials, collections of wild flowers and shells and seaweeds, fragments of silver plate that had lain there always, as far as they knew, along with some old miniatures and daguerreotypes in rusty leather cases, and old bundles of papers that Mr. Brion had warned them to take care of – and with their own portfolios of sketches and little personal treasures of various kinds, their father's watch, and stick, and spurs, and spectacles – and so on, and so on.
After this, they had only to pack up their bed and table linen and knives and forks, which were to go with them to Melbourne, and to arrange their own scanty wardrobes to the best advantage.
"We shall certainly want some clothes," said Eleanor, surveying their united stock of available wearing apparel on Elizabeth's bedroom floor. "I propose that we appropriate – say £5 – no, that might not be enough; say £10 – from the furniture money to settle ourselves up each with a nice costume – dress, jacket, and bonnet complete – so that we may look like other people when we get to Melbourne."
"We'll get there first," said Patty, "and see what is worn, and the price of things. Our black prints are very nice for everyday, and we can wear our brown homespuns as soon as we get away from Mrs. Dunn. She said it was disrespectful to poor father's memory to put on anything but black when she saw you in your blue gingham, Nelly. Poor old soul! one would think we were a set of superstitious heathen pagans. I wonder where she got all those queer ideas from?"
"She knows a great deal more than we do, Patty," said wise Elizabeth, from her