LILLY DOGGER IS SENT TO BED.
That night the broad-shouldered child, Lilly Dogger, was up later
than usual. An arrear of pots and saucepans to scour, along with
customary knives and forks to clean, detained her.
“Bustle, you huzzy, will ye?” cried the harsh voice of old Mildred,
who was adjusting the kettle on the kitchen fire, while in the
scullery the brown-eyed little girl worked away at the knife-board. A
mutton-fat, fixed in a tin sconce on the wall, so as to command both
the kitchen and the scullery, economically lighted each, the old woman
and her drudge, at her work.
“Yes’m, please,” she said interrogatively, for the noise of her task
prevented her hearing distinctly.
“Be alive, I say. It’s gone eleven, you slut; ye should a bin in your
bed an hour,” screeched Mildred, and then relapsed into her customary
grumble.
“Yes, Mrs. Tarnley, please’m,” answered the little girl, resuming with
improved energy.
Drowsy enough was the girl. If there had been a minute’s respite from
her task, I think she would have nodded.
“Be them things rubbed up or no, or do you mean to ’a done to-night,
huzzy?” cried Mrs. Tarnley, this time so near as to startle her, for
she had unawares put her wrinkled head into the scullery. “Stop that
for to-night, I say. Leave ’em lay, ye’ll finish in the morning.”
“Shall I take down the fire, Mrs. Tarnley, ma’am, please?” asked Lilly
Dogger, after a little pause.
“No, ye sha’n’t. What’s that ye see on the fire; have ye eyes in your
head? Don’t you see the kettle there? How do I know but your master’ll
be home to-night, and want a cup o’ tea, or--law knows what?”
Mrs. Tarnley looked put about, as she phrased it, and in one of those
special tempers which accompanied that state. So Lilly Dogger, eyeing
her with wide open eyes, made her a frightened little courtesy.
“Why don’t ye get up betimes in the morning, huzzy, and then ye
needn’t be mopin’ about half the night? All the colour’s washed out o’
your big, ugly, platter face, wi’ your laziness--as white as a turnip.
When I was a girl, if I left my work over so, I’d ’a the broomstick
across my back, I promise ye, and bread and water next day too good
for my victuals; but now ye thinks ye can do as ye like, and all’s
changed! An’ every upstart brat is as good as her betters. But don’t
ye think ye’ll come it over me, lass, don’t ye. Look up there at the
clock, will ye, or do ye want me to pull ye up by the ear--ten minutes
past eleven--wi’ your dawdling, ye limb!”
The old woman whisked about, and putting her hand on a cupboard door,
she turned round again before opening it, and said--
“Come on, will ye, and take your bread if you want it, and don’t ye
stand gaping there, ye slut, as if I had nothing to do but attend upon
you, with your impittence. I shouldn’t give ye _that_.”
She thumped a great lump of bread down on the kitchen table by which
the girl was now standing.
“Not a bit, if I did right, and ye’ll not be sittin’ up to eat that,
mind ye; ye’ll take it wi’ ye to yer bed, young lady, and tumble in
without delay, d’ye mind? For if I find ye out o’ bed when I go in to
see all’s right, I’ll just gi’e ye that bowl o’ cold water over yer
head. In wi’ ye, an’ get ye twixt the blankets before two minutes--get
along.”
The girl knew that Mrs. Tarnley could strike as well as “jaw,” and
seldom threatened in vain, so with eyes still fixed upon her, she took
up her fragment of loaf, with a hasty courtesy, of which the old woman
took no notice, and vanished frightened through a door that opened off
the kitchen.
The old woman holding the candle over her head, soon peeped in as she
had threatened.
Lilly Dogger lay close affecting to be asleep, though that feat in the
time was impossible, and was afraid that the thump, thump of her
heart, for she greatly feared Mrs. Tarnley, might be audible to that
severe listener.
Out she went, however, without anything more, to the great relief of
the girl.
Lilly Dogger lay awake, for fear is vigilant, and Mrs. Tarnley’s
temper she knew was capricious as well as violent.
Through the door she heard the incessant croak of the old woman’s
voice, as she grumbled and scolded in soliloquy, poking here and there
about the kitchen. The girl lay awake, listening vaguely in the dark,
and watching the one bright spot on the whitewashed wall at the foot
of her bed, which Mrs. Tarnley’s candle in the kitchen transmitted
through the keyhole. It flitted and glided, now hither, now thither,
now up, now down, like a white butterfly in a garden, silently
indicating the movements of the old woman, and illustrating the
clatter of her clumsy old shoes.
In a little while the door opened again, and the old woman entered,
having left her candle on the dresser outside.
Mrs. Tarnley listened for a while, and you may be sure Lilly Dogger
lay still. Then the old woman, in a hard whisper, asked, “Are you
awake?” and listened.
“Are ye awake, lass?” she repeated, and receiving no answer, she came
close to the bed, by way of tucking in the coverlet, in reality to
listen.
So she stood in silence by the bed for a minute, and then very quickly
withdrew and closed the door.
Then Lilly Dogger heard her make some arrangements in the kitchen, and
move, as she rightly concluded, a table which she placed against her
door.
Then the white butterfly, having made a sudden sweep round the side
wall, hovered no longer on Lilly Dogger’s darkened walls, and old
Mildred Tarnley and her candle glided out of the kitchen.
The girl had grown curious, and she got up and peeped, and found that
a clumsy little kitchen table had been placed against her door, which
opened outward.
Through the keyhole she also saw that Mildred had not taken down the
fire. On the contrary, she had trimmed and poked it, and a kettle was
simmering on the bar.
She did not believe that Mrs. Tarnley expected the arrival of her
master, for she had said early in the day that she thought he would
come next evening. Lilly Dogger was persuaded that Mrs. Tarnley was on
the look out for some one else, and guarding that fact with a very
jealous secrecy.
She went again to her bed; wondering she listened for the sounds of
her return, and looked for the little patch of light on the
whitewashed wall; but that fluttering evidence of Mrs. Tarnley’s
candle did not reappear before the tired little girl fell asleep.
She was wakened in a little time by Mrs. Tarnley’s somewhat noisy
return. She was grumbling bitterly to herself, poking the fire, and
pitching the fire-irons and other hardware about with angry
recklessness.
The girl turned over, and notwithstanding all Mildred’s noisy
soliloquy was soon asleep again.
Again she awoke--I suppose recalled to consciousness by some noise in
the kitchen. The little white light was in full play on the wall at
the foot of her bed, and Mrs. Tarnley was talking fluently in an
undertone. Then came a silence, during which the old Dutch clock
struck one.
Lilly Dogger’s eyes were wide open now, and her ears erect. She heard
no one answer the old woman, who resumed her talk in a minute; and now
she seemed careful to make no avoidable noise--speaking low, and when
she moved about the kitchen treading softly, and moving anything she
had to stir gently. Altogether she was now taking as much care not to
disturb as she had shown carelessness upon the subject before.
Lilly Dogger again slipped out of bed, and peeped through the keyhole.
But she could not see Mrs. Tarnley nor her companion, if she had one.
Old Mildred was talking on, not in her grumbling interrupted
soliloquy, but in the equable style of one spinning a long narrative.
This hum was relieved now and then by the gentle click of a teacup, or
the jingle of a spoon.
If Mrs. Tarnley was drinking her tea alone at this hour of night and
talking so to herself, she was doing that she had never done before,
thought the curious little girl; and she must be a-going mad. From
this latter apprehension, however, she was relieved by hearing some
one cough. It was not Mrs. Tarnley, who suspended her story, however.
But there was an unmistakable difference of tone in this cough, and
old Mildred said more distinctly something about a cure for a cough
which she recommended.
Then came an answer in an odd drawling voice. The words she could not
hear, but there could no longer be any doubt as to the presence of a
stranger in the kitchen.
Lilly Dogger was rather frightened, she did not quite know why, and
listened without power to form a conjecture. It was plain that the
person who enjoyed old Mildred’s hospitality was not her master, nor
her mistress, nor old Dulcibella Crane.
As she listened, and wondered, and speculated, sleep overtook her once
more, and she quite forgot the dialogue, and the kitchen, and Mildred
Tarnley’s tea, and went off upon her own adventures in the wild land
of dreams.