NAN AS HOUSEKEEPER.
"Good morning, Mrs. Sperry," Nan called as she drew rein at the door of
the lodge. "Could Bertha go up to the house and stay until I have
cantered into town and back? Miss Dahlia is still in bed and I have a few
purchases to make."
Then Nan told her new plan and the gardener's wife replied, "Bertha and
Bobsy are in school. They take their lunch and stay all day and my
husband works over at Baxters' now till mid-afternoon, so I'll take my
basket of darning and go right up to be near Miss Dahlia if she should
call."
"Thank you, Mrs. Sperry, I won't be gone long and you'll find my room
just flooded with sunshine."
An hour later Nan returned and soon thereafter a delivery wagon left a
bundle at the kitchen door. Mrs. Sperry declared that she could stay all
the morning just as well as not.
Miss Dahlia did not awaken. Now and then Mrs. Sperry heard the tapping of
a hammer from the ground floor where the kitchen and maid's dining room
were and she wondered what Miss Dahlia would think of the new plan.
At about noon, Nan tiptoed upstairs and the gardener's wife looked up
with a welcoming smile. "I'm on the last hole in the last stocking," she
said softly. "I'm so glad to have them all done." Then she added, "Is the
new plan finished?"
The girl nodded. "I do hope Aunt Dahlia will like it," she said.
"Nan, dearie," a sweet voice called from the next room, and Mrs. Sperry
taking her basket of darned stockings, nodded goodbye and tiptoed away
while the girl went to answer the call.
"I've had such a restful sleep, dear," the little old lady said, "and now
I'll dress and help you prepare our lunch. Really, Nan, I shall enjoy
being allowed to go into a kitchen again. You know when I was a girl it
was considered both proper and fashionable for a young lady to learn how
to cook that she might direct her servants intelligently, if for no other
reason, and many times I've wished I might slip down, when the cook was
away, and see if I could still make some of the things as my dear mother
taught me, but Sister Ursula did not approve. She said one of the maids
might see me and think that I was queer."
Nan laughed. "What fun we will have, Aunt Dahlia," she declared as she
assisted the little old lady to dress, "for, if you will, I would like to
have you teach me to cook as your mother taught you."
Then, when they were ready to go down stairs, Miss Dahlia said with
almost girlish eagerness, "This afternoon we'll go up in the attic.
There's a box somewhere up there which is filled with books, and in one
of them my mother kept her tried recipes."
Nan led the way past the cold, formal dining room, with its polished
table and high-backed carved chairs. The little old lay shuddered as she
glanced in. "It will be hard to get used to having Sister Ursula's place
always vacant," she said.
"I knew it would, dear Aunt Dahlia," the girl replied, as she put an arm
about the little lady, "and that's why I have planned to have our dining
room somewhere else."
They had reached the ground floor and the girl opened a door. Miss Dahlia
glanced in and then she exclaimed with real pleasure, "Nan, how
charmingly you have arranged this little room!"
It had formerly been the maids' dining room. It was on a level with the
ground. The wide windows opened upon the garden, a lilac bush, close to
the house was fragrant with bloom, and a mocking bird, somewhere near,
was singing joyously. But it was the inside which had been transformed as
though by magic. Nan had scrubbed the creamy walls and woodwork and had
hung blue and white draperies at the sunny windows, while at one side
stood a high long basket-box of drooping ferns. The table was daintily
set with blue bird dishes which Nan had used in boarding school when she
had a spread for her friends. There were only two chairs, and, since Miss
Ursula had never dined in this room, the loneliness of one gone could not
be so keenly felt.
"Be seated, my lady," the merry girl said as she drew out the chair that
faced the garden. "You are now to partake of the very first meal that
your new cook has ever prepared." Miss Dahlia was delighted with the
dainty luncheon. Nan chatted joyously, although whenever she was alone,
she pondered deeply on how to solve the serious problem that was
confronting them.