Kitabı oku: «Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood», sayfa 8
“Of course I do not mean that poor Carey should truckle to her,” said Mary, rather nettled at the implication; “but I don’t think these irregular hours, and all this roaming about the country at all times, can be well in themselves for her or the children.”
“My dear Mary, did you never take a party of children into the country in the spring for the first time? If not, you never saw the prettiest and most innocent of intoxications. I had once to take the little Pyrtons to their place in the country one April and May, months that they had always spent in London; and I assure you they were perfectly mad, only with the air, the sight of the hawthorns, and all the smells. I was obliged to be content with what they could do, not what ought to be done, of lessons. There was no sitting still on a fine morning. I was as bad myself; the blood seemed to dance in one’s veins, and a room to be a prison.”
“This is not spring,” said Mary.
“No, but she began in spring, and habits were formed.”
“No doubt, but they cannot be good. They keep up flightiness and excitability.”
“Oh, that’s grief, poor dear!”
“We bain’t carousing, we be dissembling grief, as the farmer told the clergyman who objected to merry-making after a funeral,” said Mary, rather severely. Then she added, seeing Clara looked annoyed, “You think me hard on poor dear Carey, but indeed I am not doubting her affection or her grief.”
“Remember, a woman with children cannot give herself entirely up to sorrow without doing them harm.”
“Poor Carey, I am sure I do not want to see her given up to sorrow, only to have her a little more moderate, and perhaps select—so as not to do herself harm with her relations—who after all must be more important to her than any outsiders.”
The artist’s wife could not but see things a little differently from the schoolmaster’s sister, who moreover knew nothing of Carey’s former life; and Clara made answer—
“Sending her down to these people was the greatest error of dear good Dr. Brownlow’s life.”
“I am not sure of that. Blood is thicker than water.”
“But between sisters-in-law it is apt to be only ill-blood, and very turbid.”
“For shame, Clara.”
“Well, Mary, you must allow something for human nature’s reluctance to be treated as something not quite worthy of a handshake from a little country town Serene Highness! I may be allowed to doubt whether Dr. Brownlow would not have done better to leave her unbound to those who can never be congenial.”
“Granting that (not that I do grant it, for the Colonel is worthy), should not she be persuaded to conform herself.”
“To purr and lay eggs? My dear, that did not succeed with the ugly duckling, even in early life.”
“Not after it had been among the swans? You vain Clara!”
“I only lay claim to having seen the swans—not to having brought many specimens down here.”
“Such as that Nita, or Mr. Hughes?”
“More like the other bird, certainly,” said Clara, smiling; “but Mary, if you had but seen what that house was. Joe Brownlow was one of those men who make themselves esteemed and noted above their actual position. He was much thought of as a lecturer, and would have had a much larger practice but for his appointment at the hospital. It was in the course of the work he had taken for a friend gone out of town that he caught the illness that killed him. His lectures brought men of science about him, and his practice had made him acquainted with us poor Bohemians, as you seem to think us. Old Mrs. Brownlow had means of her own, and theirs was quite a wealthy house among our set. Any of us were welcome to drop into five o’clock tea, or at nine at night, and the pleasantness and good influence were wonderful. The motherliness and yet the enthusiasm of Mrs. Brownlow made her the most delightful old lady I ever saw. I can’t describe how good she was about my marriage, and many more would say they owed all that was brightest and best in them to that house. And there was Carey, like a little sunshiny fairy, the darling of everyone. No, not spoilt—I see what you are going to say.”
“Only as we all spoilt her at school. Nobody but her Serene Highness ever could help making a pet of her.”
“That’s more reasonable, Mary,” said Mrs. Acton, in a more placable voice; “she did plenty of hard work, and did not spare herself, or have what would seem indulgences to most women; but nobody could see the light of her eyes and smile without trying to make it sparkle up; and she was just the first thought in life to her husband and his mother. I am sure in my governess days I used to think that house paradise, and her the undoubted queen of it. And now, that you should turn against her, Mary, when she is uncrowned, and unappreciated, and brow-beaten.”
She had worked herself up, and had tears in her eyes.
Mary laughed a little.
“It is hard, when I only want to keep her from making herself be unappreciated.”
“And I say it is in vain!” cried Clara, “for it is not in the nature of the people to appreciate her, and nothing will make them get on together.”
Poor Mary! she had expected her friend to be more reasonable and less defensive; but she remembered that even at school Clara had always protected Caroline whenever she had attempted to lecture her. All she further tried to say was—
“Then you won’t help me to advise her to be more guarded, and not shock them?”
“I will not tease the poor little thing, when she has enough to torment her already. If you had known her husband, and watched her last winter, you would be only too thankful to see her a little more like herself.”
Mary was silent, finding that she should only argue round and round if they went on, and feeling that Clara thought her old-maidish, and could not enter into her sense that, the balance-weight being gone, gusts of wind ought to be avoided. She sat wondering whether she herself was prim and old-maidish, or whether she was right in feeling it a duty to expostulate and deliver her testimony.
There was no doing it on this day. Carey was always surrounded by children and guests, and in an eager state of activity; but though again they all went home in the cool of the evening, an attempt to sing in the second-class carriage, which they filled entirely, was quashed immediately—no one knew how, and nothing worse happened than that a very dusty set, carrying odd botanical, entomological, and artistic wares, trailed through the streets of Kenminster, just as Mrs. Coffinkey, escorted by her maid, was walking primly home from drinking tea at the vicarage.
Still Mary’s reflections only strengthened her resolution. On the next day, which was Sunday, she ascended to the Folly, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, and found the family, including the parrot, spread out upon the lawn under the shade of the acacia, the mother reading to them.
“Oh, please don’t stop, mother,” cried Babie; while the more courteous Armine exclaimed—
“Miss Ogilvie, don’t you like to hear about Bevis and Jocelin Joliffe?”
“You don’t mind waiting while we finish the chapter,” added their mother; “then we break up our sitting.”
“Pray go on with the chapter,” said Mary, rather coolly, for she was a good deal taken aback at finding them reading “Woodstock” on a Sunday; “but afterwards, I do want to speak to you.”
“Oh! don’t want to speak to me. The Colonel has been speaking to me,” she said, with a cowering, shuddering sort of action, irresistibly comic.
“And he ate up half our day,” bemoaned more than one of the boys.
Miss Ogilvie sat down a little way off, not wishing to listen to “Woodstock” on a Sunday, and trying to work out the difficult Sabbatarian question in her mind.
“There!” said Caroline, closing the book, amid exclamations of “I know who Lewis Kerneguy was.” “Wasn’t Roger Wildrake jolly?” “O, mother, didn’t he cut off Trusty Tomkins’ head?” “Do let us have a wee bit more, mother; Miss Ogilvie won’t mind.”
But Carey saw that she did mind, and answered—
“Not now; there won’t be time to feed all the creatures, or to get nurse’s Sunday nosegays, if you don’t begin.” Then, coming up to her guest, she said, “Now is your time, Mary; we shall have the Rays and Mr. Hughes in presently; but you see we are too worldly and profane for the Kencroft boys on Sunday; and so they make experiments in smoking, with company less desirable, I must say, than Sir Harry Lee’s. Am I very bad to read what keeps mine round me?”
“Is it an old fashion with you?”
“Well, no; but then we had what was better than a thousand stories! And this is only a feeble attempt to keep up a little watery reflection of the old sunshine.”
It was a watery reflection indeed!
“And could it not be with something that would be—”
“Dull and goody?” put in Carey. “No, no, my dear, that would be utterly futile. You can’t catch my birds without salt. Can we, Polly?”
To which the popinjay responded, “We are all Mother Carey’s chickens.”
“I did mean salt—very real salt,” said Mary, rather sadly.
“I have not got the recipe;” said Carey. “Indeed I do try to do what must be done. My boys can hold their own in Bible and Catechism questions! Ask your brother if they can’t. And Army is a dear little fellow, with a bit of the angel, or of his father, in him; but when we’ve done our church, I see no good in decorous boredom; and if I did, what would become of the boys?”
“I don’t agree to the necessity of boredom,” said Mary; “but let that pass. There are things I wanted to say.”
“I knew it was coming. The Colonel has been at me already, levelling his thunders at my devoted head. Won’t that do?”
“Not if you heed him so little.”
“My dear, if I heeded, I should be annihilated. When he says ‘My good little sister,’ I know he means ‘You little idiot;’ so if I did not think of something else, what might not be the consequence? Why, he said I was not behaving decently!”
“No more you are.”
“And that I had no proper feeling,” continued she, laughing almost hysterically.
“No one can wonder at his being pained. It ought never to have happened.”
“Are you gone over to Mrs. Grundy? However, there’s this comfort, you’ll not mention Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law.”
“I’m sure the Colonel didn’t!”
“Ellen does though, with tragic effect.”
“You are not like yourself, Carey.”
“No, indeed I’m not! I was a happy creature a little while ago; or was it a very long, long time ago? Then I had everybody to help me and make much of me! And now I’ve got into a great dull mist, and am always knocking my head against something or somebody; and when I try to keep up the old friendships and kindnesses—poor little fragments as they are—everybody falls upon me, even you, Mary.”
“Pardon me, dearest. Some friendships and kindnesses that were once admirable, may be less suitable to your present circumstances.”
“As if I didn’t know that!” said Carey, with an angry, hurt little laugh; “and so I waited to be chaperoned up to the eyes between Clara Acton and the Duck in the very house with me. Now, Mary, I put it to you. Has one word passed that could do harm? Isn’t it much more innocent than all the Coffinkey gossip? I have no doubt Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law looks up from her black-bordered pocket-handkerchief to hear how Mrs. Brownlow’s sister-in-law went to the cricket-match. Do you know, Robert really thought I had been there? I only wonder how many I scored. I dare say Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law knows.”
“It just shows how careful you should be.”
“And I wonder what would become of the children if I shut myself up with a pile of pocket-handkerchiefs bordered an inch deep. What right have they to meddle with my ways, and my friends, and my boys?”
“Not the Coffinkeys, certainly,” said Mary; “but indeed, Carey, I myself was uncomfortable at that singing in the lanes at eleven at night.”
“It wasn’t eleven,” said Carey, perversely.
“Only 10.50—eh?”
“But what was the possible harm in it?”
“None at all in itself, only remember the harm it may do to the children for you to be heedless of people’s opinion, and to get a reputation for flightiness and doing odd things.”
“I couldn’t be like the Coffinkey pattern any more than I could be tied down to a rope walk.”
“But you need not do things that your better sense must tell you may be misconstrued. Surely there was a wish that you should live near the Colonel and be guided by him.”
“Little knowing that his guidance would consist in being set at me by Ellen and the Coffinkeys!”
“Nonsense,” said Mary, vexed enough to resume their old school-girl manners. “You know I am not set on by anybody, and I tell you that if you do not pull up in time, and give no foundation for ill-natured comments, your children will never get over it in people’s estimation. And as for themselves, a little steadiness and regularity would be much better for their whole dispositions.”
“It is holiday time,” said Carey, in a tone of apology.
“If it is only in holiday time—”
“The country has always seemed like holiday. You see we used to go—all of us—to some seaside place, and be quite free there, keeping no particular hours, and being so intensely happy. I haven’t yet got over the feeling that it is only for a time, and we shall go back into the dear old home and its regular ways.” Then clasping her hands over her side as though to squeeze something back, she broke out, “O Mary, Mary, you mustn’t scold me! You mustn’t bid me tie myself to regular hours till this summer is over. If you knew the intolerable stab when I recollect that he is gone—gone—gone for ever, you would understand that there’s nothing for it but jumping up and doing the first thing that comes to hand. Walking it down is best. Oh! what will become of me when the mornings get dark, and I can’t get up and rush into those woods? Yes”—as Mary made some affectionate gesture—“I know I have gone on in a wild way, but who would not be wild who had lost him? And then they goad me, and think me incapable of proper feeling,” and she laughed that horrid little laugh. “So I am, I suppose; but feeling won’t go as other people think proper. Let me alone, Mary, I won’t damage the children. They are Joe’s children, and I know what he wanted and wished for them better than Robert or anybody else. But I must go my own way, and do what I can bear, and as I can, or—or I think my heart would break quite, and that would be worse for them than anything.”
Mary had tears in her eyes, drawn forth by the vehement passion of grief apparent in the whole tone of her poor little friend. She had no doubts of Carey’s love, sorrow, or ability, but she did seriously doubt of her wisdom and judgment, and thought her undisciplined. However, she could say no more, for Nita Ray and Janet were advancing on them.
The next day Caroline was in bed with one of her worst headaches. Mary felt that she had been a cruel and prim old duenna, and meekly bore Clara’s reproachful glances.
CHAPTER X. – ELLEN’S MAGNUM BONUMS
He put in his thumb
And he pulled out a plum,
And cried, “What a good boy am I!”
Jack Horner.
Whether it were from the effects of the warnings, or from that of native good sense, from that time forward Mrs. Joseph Brownlow sobered down, and became less distressing to her sister-in-law. Mary carried off her brother to Wales, and the Acton and Ray party dispersed, while Dr. and Mrs. Lucas came for a week, giving much relief to Mrs. Brownlow, who could discuss the family affairs with them in a manner she deemed unbecoming with Mrs. Acton or Miss Ogilvie. Had Caroline heard the consultation, she would have acquitted Ellen of malice; and indeed her Serene Highness was much too good to gossip about so near a connection, and had only confided her wonder and perplexity at the strange phenomenon to her favourite first cousin, who unfortunately was not equally discreet.
With the end of the holidays finished also the trying series of first anniversaries, and their first excitements of sorrow, so that it became possible to be more calm and quiet.
Moreover, two correctives came of themselves to Caroline. The first was Janet’s inordinate correspondence with Nita Ray, and the discovery that the girl held herself engaged to stay with the sisters in November.
“Without asking me!” she exclaimed, aghast.
“I thought you heard us talking,” said Janet, so carelessly, that her mother put on her dignity.
“I certainly had no conception of an invitation being given and accepted without reference to me.”
“Come, now, Mother Carey,” said this modern daughter; “don’t be cross! We really didn’t know you weren’t attending.”
“If I had I should have said it was impossible, as I say now. You can never have thought over the matter!”
“Haven’t I? When I am doing no good here, only wasting time?”
“That is my fault. We will set to work at once steadily.”
“But my classes and my lectures!”
“You are not so far on but that our reading together will teach you quite as much as lectures.”
Janet looked both sulky and scornful, and her mother continued—
“It is not as if we had not modern books, and I think I know how to read them so as to be useful to you.”
“I don’t like getting behindhand with the world.”
“You can’t keep up even with the world without a sound foundation. Besides, even if it were more desirable, the Rays cannot afford to keep you, nor I to board you there.”
“I am to pay them by helping Miss Ray in her copying.”
“Poor Miss Ray!” exclaimed Carey, laughing. “Does she know your handwriting?”
“You do not know what I can do,” said Janet, with dignity.
“Yes, I hope to see it for myself, for you must put this notion of going to London out of your head. I am sure Miss Ray did not give the invitation—no, nor second it. Did she, Janet?”
Janet blushed a little, and muttered something about Miss Ray being afraid of stuck-up people.
“I thought so! She is a good, sensible person, whom grandmamma esteemed very much; but she has never been able to keep her sister in order; and as to trusting you to their care, or letting you live in their set, neither papa nor grandmamma would ever have thought of it.”
“You only say so because her Serene Highness turns up her nose at everything artistic and original.”
“Janet, you forget yourself,” Caroline exclaimed, in a tone which quelled the girl, who went muttering away; and no more was ever heard of the Ray proposal, which no doubt the elder sister at least had never regarded as anything but an airy castle.
However, Caroline was convinced that the warnings against the intimacy had not been so uncalled for as she had believed; for she found, when she tried to tighten the reins, that her daughter was restive, and had come to think herself a free agent, as good as grown up. Spirit was not, however, lacking to Caroline, and when she had roused herself, she made Janet understand that she was not to be disregarded or disobeyed. Regular hours were instituted, and the difficulty of getting broken into them again was sufficient proof to her that she had done wrong in neglecting them. Armine yawned portentously, and declared that he could not learn except at his own times; and Babie was absolutely naughty more than once, when her mother suffered doubly in punishing her from the knowledge of whose fault it was. However, they were good little things, and it was not hard to re-establish discipline with them. After a little breaking in, Babie gave it to her dolls as her deliberate opinion that “Wegulawity settles one’s mind. One knows when to do what.”
Janet could not well complain of the regularity in itself, though she did cavil at the actual arrangements, and they were altered all round to please her, and she showed a certain contempt for her teacher in the studies she resumed with her mother; but after the dictionary, encyclopaedia and other authorities, including Mr. Ogilvie, proved almost uniformly to be against her whenever there was a difference of opinion, she had sense enough to perceive that she could still learn something at home.
Moreover, after one or two of these references, Mr. Ogilvie offered to look over her Latin and Greek exercises, and hear her construe on his Saturday half-holidays, declaring that it would be quite a refreshment. Caroline was shocked at the sacrifice, but she could not bear to affront her daughter, so she consented; but as she thought Janet was not old enough to need a chaperon, and as her boys did want her, she was hardly ever present at the lessons.
Moreover, Mr. Ogilvie had a lecturer from London to give weekly lectures on physical science to his boys, and opened the doors to ladies. This was a great satisfaction, chiefly for the sake of Bobus and Jock, but also for Janet’s and her mother’s. The difficulty was to beat up for ladies enough to keep one another in countenance; but happily two families in the country, and one bright little bride in the town, were found glad to open their ears, so that Ellen had no just cause of disapproval of the attendance of her sister and niece.
Ellen had more cause to sigh when Michaelmas came, and for the first time taught poor Carey what money matters really meant. Throughout her married life, her only stewardship had concerned her own dress and the children’s; Mrs. Brownlow’s occasional plans of teaching her housekeeping had always fallen through, Janet being always her grandmamma’s deputy.
Thus Janet and nurse had succeeded to the management when poor Carey was too ill and wretched to attend to it; and it had gone on in their hands at the Pagoda. Janet was pleased to be respected accordingly by her aunt, who always liked her the best, in spite of her much worse behaviour, for were not her virtues her own, and her vices her mother’s?
Caroline had paid the weekly books, and asked no questions, until the winding up of the executor’s business; and the quarterly settlement of accounts made startling revelations that the balance at her bankers was just eleven shillings and fourpence halfpenny, and what was nearly as bad, the discovery was made in the presence of her fellow executor, who could not help giving a low whistle. She turned pale, and gasped for breath, in absolute amazement, for she was quite sure they were living at much less expense than in London, and there had been no outgoings worth mentioning for dress or journeys. What were they to do? Surely they could not live upon less! Was it her fault?
She was so much distressed, that the good-natured Colonel pitied her, and answered kindly—
“My good little sister, you were inexperienced. You will do better another year.”
“But there’s nothing to go on upon!”
He reminded her of the rent for the London house, and the dividends that must soon come in.
“Then it will be as bad as ever! How can we live more cheaply than we do?”
“Ellen is an excellent manager, and you had better consult her on the scale of your expenditure.”
Caroline’s spirit writhed, but before she had time to say anything, or talk to Janet, the Colonel had heard his excellent housewife’s voice, and called her into the council. She was as good as possible, too serenely kind to manifest surprise or elation at the fulfilment of her forebodings. To be convicted of want of economy would have been so dreadful and disgraceful, that she deeply felt for poor Caroline, and dealt with her tenderly and delicately, even when the weekly household books were opened, and disclosed how much had been spent every week in items, the head and front of which were oft repeated in old nurse’s self-taught writing—
“Man...... Glas of beare. 1d.
Creme........... 3d.”
For had not the Colonel’s wife warned against the endless hospitality of glasses of beer to all messengers; and had not unlimited cream with strawberries and apple-tarts been treated as a kind of spontaneous luxury produced at the Belforest farm agent’s? To these, and many other small matters, Caroline was quite relieved to plead guilty, and to promise to do her best by personal supervision; and Ellen set herself to devise further ways of reduction, not realising how hopeless it is to prescribe for another person’s household difficulties. It is not in the nature of things that such advice should be palatable, and the proverb about the pinching of the shoe is sure to be realised.
“Too many servants,” said prudence. “If old nurse must be provided for—and she ought to have saved enough to do without—it would be much better to pension her off, or get her into an almshouse.”
Caroline tried to endure, as she made known that she viewed nurse as a sacred charge, about whom there must be no question.
Ellen quietly said—
“Then it is no use to argue, but she must be allowed no more discretion in the housekeeping.”
“No, I shall do that myself,” said Caroline.
“An extravagant cook.”
“That may be my fault. I will try to judge of that.”
“Irregular hours.”
“They shall end with the holidays.”
There was still another maid, whom Ellen said was only kept to wait on nurse, but who, Caroline said, did all their needlework, both making and mending.
“That,” said Ellen, “I should have thought you and Janet could do. I do nearly all our work with the girls’ help; I am happy to say that Jessie is an excellent needlewoman, and Essie and Ellie can do something. I only direct the nursery maid; I never trust anything to servants.”
“I could never bear not to trust people,” said Caroline.
Ellen sighed, believing that she would soon be cured of that; and Carey added—
“On true principles of economy, surely it is better that Emma, who knows how, should mend the clothes, than that I should botch them up in any way, when I can earn more than she costs me!”
“Earn!”
“Yes; I can model, and I can teach. Was I not brought up to it?”
“Yes, but now it is impossible! It is not a larger income that you want, but proper attention to details in the spending of it, as I will show you.”
Whereupon Mrs. Brownlow, in her neat figures, built up a pretty little economical scheme, based on a thorough knowledge of the subject. Caroline tried to follow her calculations, but a dreaminess came over her; she found herself saying “Yes,” without knowing what she was assenting to; and while Ellen was discoursing on coals and coke, she was trying to decide which of her casts she could bear to offer for sale, and going off into the dear old associations connected with each, so that she was obliged at the end, instead of giving an unqualified assent, to say she would think it over; and Ellen, who had marked her wandering eye, left off with a conviction that she had wasted her breath.
Certainly she was not prepared for the proposal with which Mother Carey almost rushed into the room the next day, just as she was locking up her wine, and the Colonel lingering over his first glance at the day’s Times.
“I know what to do! Miss James is not coming back? And you have not heard of any one? Then, if you would only let me teach your girls with mine! You know that is what I really can do. Yes, indeed, I would be regular. I always was. You know I was, Robert, till I came here, and didn’t quite know what I was about; and I have been regular ever since the end of the holidays, and I really can teach.”
“My dear sister,” edged in the Colonel, as she paused for breath, “no one questions your ability, only the fitness of—”
“I had thought over two things,” broke in Caroline again. “If you don’t like me to have Jessie, and Essie, and Ellie, I would offer to prepare little boys. I’ve been more used to them than to girls, and I know Mr. Ogilvie would be glad. I could have the little Wrights, and Walter Leslie, and three or four more directly, but I thought you might like the other way better.”
“I can see no occasion for either,” said Ellen. “You need no increase in income, only to attend to details.”
“And I had rather do what I can—than what I can’t,” said Caroline.
“Every lady should understand how to superintend her own household,” said her Serene Highness.
“Granted; oh, granted, Ellen! I’m going to superintend with all my might and main, but I don’t want to be my own upper servant, and I know I should make no hand of it, and I had much rather earn something by my wits. I can do it best in the way I was trained; and you know it is what I have been used to ever since my own children were born.”
Ellen heaved a sigh at this obtuseness towards what she viewed as the dignified and ladylike mission of the well-born woman, not to be the bread-winner, but the preserver and steward, of the household. Here was poor little Caroline so ignorant as actually to glory in having been educated for a governess!
The Colonel, wanting to finish his Times in peace, looked up and said, with the gracious tone he always used to his brother’s wife—
“My good little sister, it is very praiseworthy in you to wish to exert yourself, and very kind and proper to desire to begin at home, but you must allow us a little time to consider.”
She took this as a hint to retreat; and her Serene Highness likewise feeling it a dismissal, tried at once to obviate all ungraciousness by saying, “We are preserving our magnum bonums, Caroline dear; I will send you some.”
“Magnum bonum!” gasped Caroline, hearing nothing but the name. “Do you know—?”
“I know the recipe of course, and can give you an excellent one. I will come over by-and-by and explain it to you.”
Caroline stood confounded. Had Joe revealed all to his brother? Was it to be treated as a domestic nostrum? “Then you know what the magnum bonum is?” she faltered.
“Are you asking as a philosopher,” said the Colonel, amused by her tone
“I don’t know what you mean, Colonel,” said his wife. “I offered Caroline a basket of magnum bonums for preserving, and one would think I had said something very extraordinary.”
“Perhaps it is my cockney ignorance,” said Caroline, beginning to breathe freely, and thinking it would have been less oppressive if Sua Serenita would have either laughed or scolded, instead of gravely leading her past the red-baize door which shut out the lower regions to the room where white armies of jam-pots stood marshalled, and in the midst two or three baskets of big yellow plums, which awoke in her a remembrance of their name, and set her laughing, thanking, and preparing to carry home the basket.
