A great event happened in the back-kitchen of Bailie Holden. The postman had brought a letter with a fine monogram—a very stiff, square letter, for Miss Janet Urquhart. The table-maid, who considered herself quite as good as a governess, examined it as though there must needs be some mistake in the address. The housemaid turned it about and looked at it endways and upside down, to see if there might not be another name concealed somewhere. She rubbed it with her apron to see if the top would come off and something be revealed beneath. The cook, into whose hands the missive next passed, left a perfect tracing of her thumb and fore-finger upon it, done in oils, and very well executed, too.
In this condition it reached the back-kitchen at last, and the hands of Janet of Inverness. As she took the letter in her little damp fingers, she grew pale to the lips. What she feared, I cannot tell—probably only the coming true of some of her dreams.
In a cluster round the door stood the housemaid, the table-maid, and family cat—the one which went habitually on four legs, I mean. The cook moved indignantly about the range, clattering tongs, pans, and other instruments of music, as it is the immemorial use of all cooks when the bird in the breast does not sing sweetly. She was, of course, quite above curiosity as to what Janet's letter might contain.
"Likely it's an invitation!" sneered the housemaid.
"Aye, frae the police!" added the table-maid from the doorway. She was plain, and Cleaver's boy never stopped [164]to gossip with her. Not that she cared or would have stood talking with the likes of him.
The cook banged the top of the range, like Tubal-cain when Naamah vexed him in that original stithy, near by the city of Enoch in the land of Nod.
Janet of Inverness opened the letter. Scarcely could she believe her eyes. It was a formal invitation upon a beautifully written card, and contained a wish on the part of Mr. Greg Tennant and Miss Tennant that Miss Janet Urquhart would favour them with her company at Aurelia Villa on the evening of Friday the 17th, at eight o'clock. R.S.V.P.
Janet sank into a seat speechless, still holding the invitation. The table-maid came and looked over her shoulder.
"Goodness me!" she exclaimed, as she read the card.
"She's been tellin' the truth after a'," said the housemaid, who, having some claims to beauty, was glad of Janet's good fortune, and hoped that the like might happen to herself.
"I dinna believe a word o't!" said the cook indignantly. "I'se warrant she wrote it hersel'!"
But Janet had not written it herself. She could not even bring herself to write the answer, though she had received a sound School Board education. But the three R's do not contemplate the answering of invitations upon thick cardboard, ending "R.S.V.P." They stop at the spelling of "trigonometry" and the solving of vulgar fractions.
In spite of her silks and satins and her vaunted experience, Janet did not know the meaning of "R.S.V.P." But the housemaid had not brushed clothes ten years for nothing.
"It means 'Reply shortly, very pleased'!" said [165]she. Which, being substantially correct, settled the question.
Nevertheless, poor Janet was in great perturbation. When Cleaver's boy went to see her that evening before going on duty she showed him the card.
"What shall I do?" she said. "I hae nothing fit to wear, and I am feared to gang."
Cleaver's boy looked up at the ceiling of the back-kitchen, as he sat on the edge of the sink, unconscious that there was a tap running behind him and that the plug was in.
"There was that purple brocade ye telled me aboot, wi' the auld lace and the pearls that belonged to your grandmither, the Earl's dochter," said James Annan, meditatively.
"O aye," said Janet. "Yes, of course there is that ane." But she did not look happy.
"Or there is the plain white muslin wi' the crimson sash aboot the waist, that the twa gentlemen were for stickin' are anither aboot, yon nicht they quarrelled wha was to see ye hame."
"Aye," said Janet, piteously, "there's that ane too."
"An' what say ye," continued James Annan remorselessly, "to the yellow sattin, trimmed wi' flounces o' glory-pidgeon roses and——?"
Cleaver's boy suddenly stopped. He had been feeling for some time a growing coolness somewhere. But at this point the water in the sink ran over on the floor, and he turned round to discover that he had been sitting in a full trough of excellent Moorfoot water, with the spigot running briskly down his back all the while.
"O James," cried Janet, pleased to get a chance to change the subject, "what for did ye do that, James? [166]And your new breeks, too!" she added, with an expression of supreme pain.
"I didna do it for naething," remarked Cleaver's boy, tartly. "I didna do it ava'. It was you that left the spigot rinnin and the plug in!" he added, after a thoughtful pause, while he realised how cool a sitz-bath can be, even on a summer evening, when one stands by an open window.
Now nothing is more provoking, when you are performing a high and noble work in the reformation of another person's morals, than to have the thread of your weighty discourse broken by something so ridiculous as sitting down in a bucket of water. There was every reason why Cleaver's boy should be annoyed.
But Janet broke out in a sobbing ecstacy of laughter, which irritated her lover more even than her wrong-doing.
"I wonder at you," he said, "telling a' thae lees when ye haena a dress to your back, forbye the alpaca that ye pit on on Sabbaths!"
It was a mistake, and Cleaver's boy knew it as soon as he had the words out of his mouth.
Janet instantly stopped in the midst of her laughter.
"I would have you know," she said with dignity, "that I shall accept the invitation. And I will never speak to you again. I'll thank you to take yourself out of my presence, James Annan!"
"And out of Bailie Holden's back-kitchen!" continued her lover, whose colour did not diminish with the growing coolness consequent upon standing in a draught. Then as he went up the steps from the area he cried, "Be sure and put on the brocade, Janet!"
It was an unbearable affront, for Janet had told her stories so often, and with so much innocent feeling, that [167]though, of course, she could not quite believe them herself, she had nevertheless all the feelings of an indignant moralist insulted and outraged in her tenderest susceptibilities.