Nell conned her accounts and sighed worriedly. They were in a hopeless muddle; the only clear thing about them was—the unexpectedness of the size of the total. Then she turned to Aunt Kezia's books and her own separate account of what they were spending. Finally she took a long letter from the pocket of her pinafore, and studied it anxiously. Then she rose and went slowly downstairs to the kitchen.
"What'll you 'ave for lunch, miss?" queried Sarah.
"There was some chicken left, wasn't there?"
"Nothing to speak of, miss."
"You might get it up and let me see it Sarah."
Sarah left the kitchen, and Nell sat on the table and studied the butcher's account, and her brow grew puckered.
"There, miss, not more'n enough for two."
Nell eyed the diminutive wing and leg and bit of breast anxiously. Then she laughed.
"Sarah, we'll have it curried—with plenty of rice!"
"It'll never do, miss."
"I shall be quite content with rice. It will have to do, and that's all about it. We're spending too much, Sarah!"
"Well, miss, it's the little things somehow. I don't know 'ow it is, but you have such a lot of extrys—pretty jim-crams I calls 'em to myself."
"And the baker's account is so much larger too, Sarah." Nell wandered over to the bread-pan and looked in. Some words in Miss Kezia's letter were in her mind: "Keep a strict watch on the bread, and see that the stale is all used up. Servants never will trouble to do this."
"Oh, Sarah, what a heap of stale bread!"
"Well, miss, I can't help it. You all like new bread. Mr. Denis said only t'other morning at breakfast when I tried to use up a bit o' stale, 'e said, 'I wondered, where that old pair of shoes of mine had got to!'"
Her tone was full of admiration of Denis's wit.
"But—I don't understand—couldn't we order less, or something?"
"Oh, no, miss, sure as you did that, you'd come short."
"I know! I read once of a way to make stale bread new, Sarah, and I tried it for fun, and it acted beautifully."
Sarah looked sceptical.
"I'll show you with a small piece. Now let me see—first you pass it under the cold-water tap—like this—then you put it in the oven for about ten minutes."
At the end of the ten minutes she brought it forth triumphantly.
"Well, I never!" exclaimed Sarah, admiringly. "I must tell mother that! And oh, miss, I meant to tell you butter's gone up tuppence, and we do use such an orful lot!"
Nell sighed. "I've noticed we spend much more on it than Aunt Kezia did."
"Oh, yes, that's because you none liked the second best, miss, so I hordered the best. Even Miss Sheilerpat said she would as soon 'ave her bread buttered with candle grease, a little bit of a thing like 'er! You see, miss, you've been used to country butter and the best, living in a castle as you did—"
Nell hardly smiled.
"But which does Aunt Kezia have, Sarah?"
"The second best. She's a Scotch lady, you see, miss, and different and—it seemed to grow worse lately—"
"It can't be helped, Sarah. Candle grease or lamp oil, we must have it, if Aunt Kezia did. And—don't you think you could use less butter in your cooking, Sarah?" She felt distinctly mean as she said it, but it was only in accordance with strict injunctions in Miss Kezia's letter.
"Oh, well, miss," Sarah's tone grew ruffled, "I couldn't cook proper with less! And as for dripping—you wouldn't like that!"
"But you must use it if you do when Aunt Kezia is at home, Sarah," said Nell, preparing to flee. Now dripping was to Sarah as a red rag to a bull. Nell was pursued across the hall and into the morning room with an avalanche of excited eloquence, the refrain of which was: "Castle folk to eat dripping! Why, you'll turn sick at it, miss!"
Nell, in a perfect excess of goodness, went up to the Stronghold once more, and averting her eyes from a study of foxhounds on her easel, took up the account-book once more. She sent Molly and the Atom out with Kate Kearney, and then she wrestled. The end of it was flushed cheeks, angry eyes, worried brows, and a ruffled head of hair. Then Nell flung the book into a corner of the room.
"That's where you ought to be, you nasty, sordid, money-grubbing little worm!"
"Hulloa," cried Denis, suddenly appearing with Ted. "Whom on earth are you talking to, and swearing at, what's more?"
"How-do-you-do?" said Nell to Ted.
"Been washing your head, twin?"
"No."
"It looks like it, and you look pretty warm."
"Oh, do leave my looks alone!" petulantly.
Denis's eyebrows went up.
Ted looked out of the window and whistled with soft energy to himself.
"Silly old bounder wouldn't come in for ages," observed Denis, sitting astride a chair; "says he was here to lunch yesterday."
He paused, and waited for her to speak. She gave a little gasp, as she remembered the curried chicken, and was silent.
Denis's brows drew together in a great frown.
Ted broke in with a laugh.
"I'm not going to stay now! I only came in to pacify O.B."
With a little flush of horror all her instincts of hospitality awoke.
"Shut the door, Denis! Guard it! Don't let him go, except over your dead body!"
His brow cleared at once; laughing, he placed himself before the door.
"Oh, but," expostulated Ted, "I—er—I—really, you know, I just live here!"
"Wish you did, old man!"
"It's awfully kind, you know, and all that, but—"
"Oh, Ted, what a lot of breath you do waste!" ejaculated Nell. She spoke heartily, because she felt that if he went away, she would be shamed forever; but she was still cross, and inclined to make molehills into mountains.
She took her place at the table and watched Denis moodily as he peered into the dish before him.
"I say, Sheila Pat, fetch me the fairy spectacles of Karring Glen! I'll need 'em! Bothered if my own unaided mortal eyes can find any meat or snails or puppy-dogs' tails here!"
"It's curried chicken," said Nell, austerely.
"Thanks, my dear! But are you sure 'tisn't curried rice?"
"I'm in luck," Ted observed quietly; "I adore rice."
"Glad to hear it, old man! It's pretty well all you'll get to-day. Sarah, are you trying to starve your youthful charges?"
"It is my fault; I said it would do," Nell said clearly.
"How awfully nice of you," Ted cut in; "you must have known I was coming along."
"Denis, I don't want any chicken—only rice, please."
"You've got to have it, anyway."
"I don't want it!"
"Leave it, then."
She knew that tone. She frowned and bit her lip, but rather than make more fuss, she gave in.
"No one's cut any bread," observed Molly.
Ted seized the loaf. Nell glanced at him, saw his face was red and puzzled, looked at the loaf, which wore a somewhat grimy and cindery appearance, leant forward, and gave it a squeeze. Then suddenly she began to laugh and laugh: "Oh—it's an experiment!" she gasped. "I'm—afraid—it isn't—a success!"
Ted was smiling amusedly.
Denis seized the loaf.
"Great Scott, it's as hard as stone! Shake her, Ted, shake the explanation out of her!"
"I—I told Sarah—to wet it and put it in the oven—to make it new! O dear!"
He rang the bell.
"You might experiment on lump sugar next time, old girl, 'twon't affect me, you see!"
"The rest's all the same, miss! I did it all at once just as you told me to, and you said as I wasn't to horder any more till the stale was used up—"
"All right, Sarah," Denis broke in impatiently; "go to the nearest baker's, and get a loaf at once."
"Mistress won't 'ave nothink to do with Brown, sir; she says they give short weight—"
"Then go to Smith or Robinson's!" he shouted impatiently.
"I don't know either of them, sir, if you'll hexcuse me—"
"Go to the next nearest to Brown's, Sarah," he said in a gentle, lamblike voice.
"Yessir. I 'aven't any money."
He found a sixpence and handed it to her with a bow.
Ted was calmly eating his lunch.
"Servants," observed Denis, "are born without brains, and with the bump of unconscious aggravation dumped in the place where the brains ought to be."
Later, they found that the butter was rank. Before Nell knew what he was going to do Denis had attacked Sarah about it and out came a voluble and injured explanation about the best butter being so dear, and Miss Nell had said they were to have the second best because they ate such a lot and were spending too much money. Nell sat quite calm and quiet; she made no attempt to stop Sarah. She had got beyond that. Ted meanwhile had helped himself to the rank butter, and was heroically eating it, his face stolid.
Denis's brow was thunderous; in a curt voice that set poor Sarah weeping in the kitchen he told her to go.
Then there was an uncomfortable pause.
Ted broke it with an anecdote. He told it, and Nell smiled politely. Sheila Pat sat and considered awhile, then she observed clearly, "I don't see anythin' to laugh at in that story at all!"
Ted grew scarlet.
"I—I believe I left out the point, acushlum!"
"Please tell it me!"
He did—laboriously, and with none of the dry humour that usually distinguished his stories.
Nell looked at him, heroically retelling his poor little anecdote, and heroically eating his bread and rank butter, and she burst out laughing.
"Oh, poor Ted, do give K.K. the rest of that crust!"
"Should think it would poison her," said Denis, moodily.
"I like it," declared Ted, with obstinate mendacity. "You're all so particular!"
And he ate it down to the very last crumb.
After lunch Denis went off to the bank, and Ted went with him.
"Nell," at the end of the afternoon Denis burst in, "I'm all bottled up! Let me explode! Wasn't it a beastly lunch, old girl? I know we've got to be poor,—horribly, beastly poor,—but I can't stand making a show like that before a guest—making him think he oughtn't to be there at all—hang it all, to be stingy to one's friends!"
"You see," said Nell, in quite a weary old little voice, "poverty isn't so picturesque out of books as in them."
"Rice and rank butter—bricky bread! It's all rot! We can stint more when we're alone."
"I didn't know Ted was coming."
"Good Heavens, are we to live like pigs, that we can't ask anyone to lunch without an elaborate warning beforehand?"
"You just said we could stint—"
"I don't care what I said! It was a ridiculous and needless fiasco! And you know it! Why are we living so much worse all of a sudden? When Aunt Kezia's here we do have something decent to eat, though it is plain."
Nell sprang up. She flung her palette, her brush, down.
"Why don't you telegraph for her to come back since you miss her so terribly? I can't do any better! It's so beautifully easy to stand and look on, and then grumble because you can't live on the fat of the land! What do you care if the butcher's bill runs to a disgraceful total—if we're spending six times as much as we ought—if we have, in the end, to beg money of Aunt Kezia, because ours has all gone—if the bread-pan is full of stale bread? No, you're the lordly male creature who ordains impossibilities and expects them to be carried out with a smiling face! Oh, I'm sick—sick of it all! And I loathe and abominate housekeeping on farthings! It's sordid and hateful!" And she fled from the room.
Denis stood and stared at the door; then he gave a low whistle, and walked slowly up and down the room. Finally, he strode out and banged on to Nell's door.
"May I come in, twin?"
"Yes," said a very small voice. He rushed at her and butted his cheek against hers, which was suspiciously wet.
"I was a beast, mavourneen! I'm sorry, Nell—all through. By Jove, to think I'm growing into a grumpy old curmudgeon all along o' these London fogs! Why didn't we just laugh at it all, I wonder? I'm sure it was funny! You're not cross with poor bad-tempered old Snarly-Jaw, are you, Nell?"
"No! You know quite well that it was I—"
"I say, Nell, stick on a hat! We'll go and get some kippers for tea! Savory and economical and charmingly vulgar! I'm pretty hungry—I am. And we'll haul Ted along, shall we? To get the taste of that grumpy lunch out of him, eh? Here's a hat!" He seized one up from the bed and stuck it on her head. She looked up at him from under its brim, her pretty eyes still wet, her dimples dancing.
He seized her face in his hands, and gave her cheek a great, hearty kiss.
"Denis," she said, "suppose Fate had given me Patsy O'Neil for a twin!"
"You desecrate the annals of our house by such an infamous and unalluring supposition."
Ted was easily persuaded to come back to tea: he jumped at the invitation before it was finished. He would have agreed to come and stay for a week, a month, so terrified was he that he should betray remembrance of that luckless luncheon.
The Stronghold greeted them with a great, glowing fire, before which Jim O'Driscoll sat eating a biscuit; the table glimmered in its light, set out with a special daintiness; poor Sarah also was doing her best to obliterate memories. There was a raid on the kitchen for forks; a hustling and pushing for places at the fire in the Stronghold. Ted pushed and hustled Denis with all his strength, but his politeness stood in his way with the others. There was a food deal of noise and a good many tumbles as they fought and elbowed each other, and of course Molly's kipper fell into the fire.
"Oh! Oh, Denis—get it out!"
"I will!" cried Ted, and gallantly hied to the rescue.
They shouted with joy at his wild plunges after the kipper, and when he at last held it proudly aloft, minus a tail, and scorched and shrivelled into a sprat, it was met with a torrent of rude remarks.
Ted handed Molly his own kipper with an air of offended pride; in vain she protested.
"Here—catch, old man!" Denis flung a fresh kipper to him. "The burnt one will do for your second help!"
And sure enough it did. Ted found kippers, cooked by himself and eaten for tea, so good that he ate up every blackened bit of the luckless burnt fish, and declared he regretted the lost tail.
He looked round on the scorched cheeks and smiled benignly. "Isn't it good?" he said, with the simplicity that made Nell so fond of him.
"Oh, Ted, what a dear old man you will make some day!"
"Cantankerous old beast, I think!" observed Denis.
"Isn't it funny that things one cooks one's self are always so much nicer than kitchen-cooked things?" reflected Molly. "But I wish I hadn't cooked my nose quite so much."
"A cape is a promontory projecting from the land," suddenly declaimed Denis, and they all laughed.
"Ware noses!" exclaimed Ted, tenderly fingering his own.
"I like big noses," Sheila Pat said thoughtfully. "There's a more—sort of—understandin' look about them—for boys."
"Acushlum, what made you think of big noses just then?" he urged reproachfully.
"Let's play hide-and-seek all over the house!" exclaimed Molly. Sheila Pat slid from her chair.
"The benighted Englishman shall be seeker first!" she decreed, and with a little squeal of laughter darted from the room.