Part 17 (1/2)

And who knows what sort of people they are? It is not everybody I can get along with, nor is it everybody can get along with me. Now, if Helen were coming instead of Martha, that would be some relief. I could love her, I am sure, and she would put up with my ways. But your Marthas I am afraid of. Oh, dear, dear, what a nest of scorpions this affair has stirred up within me! Who would believe I could be thinking of my own misery while Ernest's mother, whom he loved so dearly, is hardly in her grave! But I have no heart, I am stony and cold. It is well to have found out just what I am!

Since I wrote that I have been trying to tell G.o.d all about it. But I could not speak for crying. And I have been getting the rooms ready.

How many little things I had planned to put in the best one, which I intended for mother I have made myself arrange them just the same for Ernest's father. The stuffed chair I have had in my room, and enjoyed so much, has been rolled in, and the Bible with large print placed on the little table near which I had pictured mother with her sweet, pale face, as sitting year after year. The only thing I have taken away is the copy of father's portrait. He won't want that!

When I had finished this business I went and shook my fist at the creature I saw in the gla.s.s.

”You're beaten I” I cried. ”You didn't want to give up the chair, nor your writing-table, nor the Bible in which you expect to record the names of your ten children I But you've had to do it, so there!”

MARCH 3.-They all got here at 7 o'clock last night, just in time for tea. I was so glad to get hold of Ernest once more that I was gracious to my guests, too. The very first thing, however, Ernest annoyed me by calling me Katherine, though he knows I hate that name, and want to be called Katy as if I were a lovable person, as I certainly am (sometimes). Of course his father and Martha called me Katherine, too.

His father is even taller, darker, blacker eyed, blacker haired than he.

Martha is a spinster.

I had got up a nice little supper for them, thinking they would need something substantial after their journey. And perhaps there was some vanity in the display of dainties that needed the mortification I felt at seeing my guests both push away their plates in apparent disgust. Ernest, too, looked annoyed, and expressed some regret that they could find nothing to tempt their appet.i.tes.

Martha said something about not expecting much from young housekeepers, which I inwardly resented, for the light, delicious bread had been sent by Aunty, together with other luxuries from her own table, and I knew they were not the handiwork of a young housekeeper, but of old Chloe, who had lived in her own and her mother's family twenty years.

Ernest went out as soon as this unlucky repast was over to hear Dr.

Embury's report of his patients, and we pa.s.sed a dreary evening, as my mind was preoccupied with longing for his return. The more I tried to think. of something to say the more I couldn't.

At last Martha asked at what time we breakfasted.

”At half-past seven, precisely,” I answered. ”Ernest is very punctual about breakfast. The other meals are more irregular.”

”That is very late,” she returned. ”Father rises early and needs his breakfast at once.”

I said I would see that he had it as early as he liked, while I foresaw that this would cost me a battle with the divinity who reigned in the kitchen.

”You need not trouble yourself. I will speak to my brother about it,”

she said.

”Ernest has nothing to do with it,” I said, quickly.

She looked at me in a speechless way, and then there was a long silence, during which she shook her head a number of times. At last she inquired: ”Did you make the bread we had on the table to-night?”

”No, I do not know how to make bread,” I said, smiling at her look of horror.

”Not know how to make bread?” she cried. The very spirit of mischief got into me, and made me ask:

”Why, can you?”

Now I know there is but one other question I could have asked her, less insulting than this, and that is:

”Do you know the Ten Commandments?”

A spinster fresh from a farm not know how make bread, to be sure!