A BUSINESS ARRANGEMENT
“I COULD ask Mrs. Hurst, of course,” said Mrs. Lane, doubtfully. “I
wonder if she would be offended?”
“Not a bit likely, I should think,” her husband answered. “She strikes
one as far too sensible a woman to be offended by a simple business
proposal. And it might suit her very well: I gathered from something she
said last night that they have not much money.”
“And you would not be bored—you and Barry?”
“Barry and I want to fish,” said Dr. Lane. “And here we’re right in the
midst of it. I might have explored round here by myself for a week
without finding that little creek young Robin showed me last night—and
you wouldn’t have had trout for breakfast, my dear!” His eye kindled at
the recollection of the previous evening. “Nearly three pounds, the
biggest fellow weighed; and four others of quite a respectable size!
After failing to get a rise all day it was almost exciting, I tell you,
Milly!”
“Yes, dear, it was lovely for you,” said Mrs. Lane, with wifely
sympathy. “And how perfectly Mrs. Hurst cooked them!”
“Couldn’t have been better. It was a cheerful contrast to the greasy
chops at the Baroin hotel. Of course it will be dull for you, dear, I’m
afraid: but not so dull as it would be in the township, I’m certain. If
you would let me take you home—”
“That is not to be thought of,” interrupted his wife. “Why, you have not
had a holiday for two years!” She smiled at him. “And there is Barry,
too.”
“Yes, there’s Barry. I want him to be quite fit before he goes back.
He’s keen on the fishing, too, and I must say I should like him to learn
something besides city ways. It’s too bad that he’s over fifteen and
doesn’t know one end of a rod or a gun from the other. If Mrs. Hurst
would have us here, there would be no twelve-mile drive night and
morning along that track you dislike so much—”
“That would decide it, if there were no other advantages!” spoke Mrs.
Lane, briskly. “I’ll ask Mrs. Hurst, dear: after all, she can hardly be
offended. I’ll put it very nicely.”
“I have always remarked that when you are truly tactful you are hard to
refuse,” said the doctor, gravely. “So I’ll hope for the best. I do hope
you won’t be horribly bored, dear; it’s all very rough on you. You have
plenty of books to go on with, haven’t you? Of course I can order
anything you like from Town. We can get the mail every day.”
“Oh, I shall manage famously,” she said. “Don’t think of worrying about
me. I shall write all the letters I should have written ever so long
ago, and read all the books. And I daresay Mrs. Hurst and that nice red
Robin will come and talk to me.”
“We seem to be taking it for granted that Mrs. Hurst will consent,” her
husband remarked. “It will be rather a blow if she won’t have us.”
But Mrs. Hurst, handled tactfully, proved responsive. At first she felt
a quick flush of pride and of outraged hospitality; to make money out of
these stranded people who were her guests, seemed an impossible thing.
Then common sense came to her aid. The Lanes, also, had their pride;
clearly, it was unthinkable that they should remain without making any
payment. And their wish to remain was very evident: Mrs. Hurst liked to
see it.
Then, too, came in her own urgent need of money. Despite her promise to
Robin not to worry, the thought of their tiny bank balance was never out
of her mind: it was so flimsy a barrier between them and disaster,
should bad times come. Dr. Lane’s offer was a generous one—more, she
knew, than he would have paid the hotel in Baroin. She protested against
it.
“It is too much for simple farm-house accommodation,” she told him, when
he came to join in the discussion. At which he laughed.
“If you saw our stuffy rooms in that hotel—!” he said. “This is luxury;
your delightful, airy rooms, and the clean freshness everywhere. It
would be ten times the holiday for us. Think, too, of all I shall save
in petrol, apart from the joys of the mantelshelf road which your
daughter says I must not malign. And my wife cannot help giving you some
extra trouble, until her ankle is better.”
“But you do not realize our limitations,” she said. “I can’t always get
good meat out here—I have to put up with whatever the travelling cart
brings, three times a week. And there are other difficulties. Robin and
I live so simply that we do not notice them, but to you—from Melbourne
. . . .” She paused unhappily, and he laughed at her again.
“As it happens, meat does not matter much to any of us,” he said.
“Fish—such trout as these—is a treat to us, and so are rabbits, which
we dare not touch in Melbourne. Barry and I can shoot and fish for the
pot, which will give us an extra incentive to do well. Try us for a
week, Mrs. Hurst, and see if we give you too much trouble.”
Mrs. Hurst had agreed, with some misgivings, and inwardly wondering how
Robin would view the matter. But Robin was frankly delighted.
“Why, we’ll make heaps of money!” she said. “And it will be rather fine,
Mother, to have people about: I don’t much like the boy, but his father
and mother are dears.”
“Why don’t you like the boy? He seems civil enough.”
“Oh, he’s civil,” said Robin, tilting her nose. “But he thinks too much
of himself, and he looks at my hair! He has a kind of lofty manner, as
if he thought it was very nice for the country that he came to stay
there.”
“Poor Barry!” said Mrs. Hurst, smiling. “Aren’t you a little hard on
him?”
“Well, I may be,” admitted Robin. “But I haven’t much time for boys,
especially town ones. Danny is worth a paddockful of them! I say,
Mother, are you sure it won’t give you too much work?”
“I shan’t mind it at all. I must drop other things, more or less: but
the garden is in such good order that it won’t suffer. The sewing can
wait.”
“Well, of course I’ll do all the rough work,” said Robin, sturdily. “I
can be housemaid and slushy, and you can be head cook and
lady-of-the-house. ’Tisn’t everyone could double those two parts, but
you could cook with one hand tied behind you! Now, if anyone speaks to
me when I’m frying fish, it’s all up with either me or the fish! I can
run errands for Mrs. Lane, and carry out her trays—we’ll make her live
on trays out on the veranda, shall we, Mother?”
“It sounds uncomfortable,” smiled Mrs. Hurst. “Still—”
“Oh, you know what I mean. We can fix her up in a jolly corner with a
couch and a little table, and she really won’t be much bother! I suppose
Dr. Lane and Barry will be out all day—that means cutting lunches: I
can do that all right. Mother, hadn’t I better go down to Merri Creek
this afternoon and telephone to the store in Baroin for things? We
haven’t nearly enough groceries.”
“Yes—and you must tell Mrs. Hawkes I shall not be able to send her any
butter for awhile. We shall have to plan things, Robin; it won’t do to
be caught without food, if fish and rabbits fail.”
“Lucky I was commissariat department at school,” said Robin, with an
impish grin. “There are four or five fowls that can be killed.” Suddenly
her face clouded. “Mother, I could get Danny to do the killing, couldn’t
I?”
“Yes, indeed,” said her mother, hastily. “You didn’t think I would let
you do it?”
“I ought to want to do it, and save money,” said Robin, still looking
distressed. “But I couldn’t kill my chooks, unless I really had to.
Rabbits are different, though I don’t enjoy dealing with them, either.
Still, they’re strangers to me, and the chooks are intimate friends. I
should feel like the lady who suggested cutting her baby in half for
King Solomon!”
The arrangement, begun with many misgivings on the part of Mrs. Hurst,
worked with remarkable smoothness. Never, she declared, were paying
guests less trouble than hers: they appeared to enjoy everything, never
grumbled, and gave as little trouble as was possible. On the other hand,
the Lanes rejoiced in the peace and freedom of Hill Farm. The food was
simple, but it was well cooked and daintily served: succulent grills and
savoury roasts were not, indeed, to be procured, but Mrs. Hurst had the
skill of a magician in making the indifferent meat of the travelling
cart assume appetizing forms, and Dr. Lane was frankly bewildered by the
variations in their meals, and assured his hostess that she was a
perpetual surprise. The freshest of vegetables, the yellowest of butter,
the thickest of cream—all were delightful to people accustomed to
eating food long past its first freshness. “If I have eggs for breakfast
here,” said the doctor, “I am morally certain that the hens have
scarcely finished cackling over them before I have eaten them! I am
growing disgracefully fat!”
Barry and his father fished and shot early and late, comfortably certain
that no one minded erratic hours for breakfast and tea. Dr. Lane had at
first made a heroic effort to be punctual, and had protested when Mrs.
Hurst assured him cheerfully that it was not necessary.
“But what does it matter?” she had asked. “Robin and I have no servants
to hamper us: it does not trouble us at all if you do come in late. And
we know what it means for you to have the morning and evening rise for
fishing; how stupid it would be for you to miss them on account of mere
meals! As for the rabbits—if you want them, you simply _must_ be out in
the evening. I can’t give you dinner at night, but you can have a meal
whenever you choose to come in.”
“But the trouble to you—”
“Why, there isn’t any trouble. I make my preparations beforehand, and
all the rest can be done while you are taking off your boots or washing
your hands.”
“But it is keeping you on duty all the time. If you had heard the frigid
warnings of the hotel in Baroin as to what we might expect if we got
home after six—!” At which Mrs. Hurst’s head went up.
“But I am not the Baroin hotel, Dr. Lane. You must recognize certain
differences between Hill Farm and that haughty establishment.” Dr. Lane
had laughed at the twinkle in her eye.
“I thank my lucky stars for them every day,” he had responded. “Well, if
you are really sure that it does not make things too hard for you, it is
certainly delightful to feel that one can carry on with a free
conscience. I’m the slave of a time-table in Melbourne: it is sheer rest
to know that at Hill Farm time does not seem to exist.”
“Only so far as you wish it to exist,” Mrs. Hurst had answered. “We want
you to enjoy yourselves, Robin and I.”
Mrs. Lane had shaken down to captivity with surprising philosophy. Her
husband had devoted his first morning to the manufacture of a makeshift
crutch, by means of which she could move about a little, giving her a
feeling of independence that added greatly to her cheerfulness. She
laughed delightedly at her own clumsy efforts at movement, even while
the pain made her wince.
“I was always taught by my mother that grace was essential to a woman!”
she said. “Dear me, if she could see me now! Robin, you bad child, don’t
laugh at the afflicted—you should be full of sympathy.”
“I am; but you would make anyone laugh,” Robin defended herself. She was
standing by, ready to help the guest’s progress towards the veranda. “Do
lean on me a bit, Mrs. Lane—I know it’s hurting you horribly, and I
don’t believe Dr. Lane would approve.”
“Certainly he wouldn’t—but then, men are so fussy, aren’t they?”
responded the afflicted one. “And I won’t be more helpless than I have
to be. Just be handy in case I stumble. I shall be much more
accomplished to-morrow; this third leg of mine isn’t really broken-in
yet.” She reached the couch in safety, and collapsed upon it with a sigh
of relief.
“There!—I did it! Just lift the old ankle up for me, my dear, and put
that horrid implement where I can’t see it—not out of my reach, though.
I may feel the need of exercise later on.”
“I don’t think you ought to feel any such thing,” said Robin, much
concerned, although it was impossible not to laugh at the cheerful
sufferer. “See, there’s a little bell on your table, Mrs. Lane: do ring
if you want anything. I shall be just round the corner.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Thin my turnips; they’re crowding each other out of the ground.”
“Dear me!” said Mrs. Lane, looking at her respectfully. “You and your
mother are people of many activities. I wish you would sit down and be
restful for a few minutes: I know I saw you pass my window at five
o’clock this morning.”
“Very likely,” Robin said, smiling. “I hope I didn’t disturb you,
though.”
“No: I was awake. Do sit down: I know I’ll need something in about two
minutes—I don’t remember yet what it is, but it will come to me! So it
would be a pity if you went. That’s right; now I can feel more restful
myself. Tell me, why do you and your mother live in this big place
alone? I know I’m very inquisitive, but I was born so.”
“Well, we must live somewhere,” Robin laughed. “And Uncle Donald left
the place to Mother. He was an old widower, and he hadn’t anyone else to
leave it to—that’s why we got it.”
“And did he live here alone?”
“Yes, but for a housekeeper. He bought the place very cheaply: of
course, he didn’t use it all, but it was so cheap he didn’t mind that.
Uncle Donald never could resist a bargain. He used to buy things at
sales, just because they were cheap; the house is full of queer old
things he picked up.” Robin grinned. “I was the worst bargain he ever
made!”
“Did he get you cheaply?”
“He got me for nothing, but he thought I was dear at any price. It was
mostly my hair, I think: it had a most irritating effect upon him.
Goodness knows, it’s burden enough to carry a flame-coloured head
through life, without one’s uncles objecting to it. I thought it should
make me an object of sympathy, but Uncle Donald seemed to fancy that the
sympathy should be given to him!”
Mrs. Lane chuckled delightedly.
“Then you didn’t get on very well?”
“Well—not exactly,” said Robin, demurely. “We disapproved of each
other. I could have put up with that, but I couldn’t stand the way he
used to speak to Mother. He really wasn’t a nice old man, Mrs. Lane. You
would have said so yourself!”
“He doesn’t sound nice,” said Mrs. Lane. “But I like his house. Don’t
you and your mother find it very lonely, though? I can imagine being
happy here for a few weeks—but to live here! I should want more
civilization and fewer cows!”
“Oh, we’re never lonely. There is too much to do, and we’re so glad to
be together. You see, I was away at school for two years, and we both
hated that.” She jumped up, suddenly, as her mother appeared, bearing a
tray. “Mother, you ought to have called me to carry that!”
“I thought you were in the garden—but I’m very glad to find you sitting
down,” said Mrs. Hurst, smiling at her. “Just a cup of eleven o’clock
tea, Mrs. Lane. I hope Robin has been looking after you.”
“Excellently—and I have been shamelessly keeping her from her work. But
she begins so early!”
“Indeed she does—too early. I was just going to call you in for your
tea, Robin.”
“Do have it out here with me,” begged Mrs. Lane.
Mrs. Hurst twinkled.
“I’m not sure that that would be correct behaviour,” she said. “Is it
done?—the farm-workers intruding on the guest—?”
“Don’t be horrid!” pleaded the guest. “I am an invalid, and I need
special treatment. Robin, dear, do bring your Mother’s tea and your own,
and let us have a party. Cheerful companionship is what my ankle needs.”
“But—Madam’s luncheon?” laughed Mrs. Hurst, sitting down, obediently.
“Oh—lunch!” said the afflicted guest, scornfully. “Madam can eat a
boiled egg. She consumes nourishment in your house at such frequent
intervals that when her ankle is better she’ll only be able to waddle!
You bring out to me trays loaded with food, and I strongly suspect you
both of perching on the kitchen-table and dining on bread-and-butter.”
Mrs. Hurst shook her head.
“I might,” she admitted, “if it were not that I have Robin—just as
Robin certainly would, but for the fact that she has me.”
“Not me!” said Robin, firmly. “I want full rations.”
“She certainly needs them, for she works very hard,” said her mother.
“So I make a point of having meals properly served: it is good for us
both, for it’s easy for women living alone to get into slack ways. We
don’t perch on the kitchen-table; we eat very respectably, on the
veranda.”
“But how nice! May I come there, too, when my silly ankle is better? I
won’t ask you when Edward and Barry happen to be at home, for I know you
would hate to have the whole party there—”
“I would!” Mrs. Hurst smiled, frankly.
“But when it is just we three? At home I have lunch alone every day—it
suits Edward better to lunch at his club, and Barry is at school. I hate
the sight of the lonely table.”
“We should like to have you very much, if you can bear lunching with
people in working clothes. No human power can get Robin out of breeches
until the evening, and not always then!”
“I should think not,” said Robin, warmly. “Fancy getting into a frock
when one has to feed pigs!”
Mrs. Lane shuddered delicately.
“I don’t know how you do it—and manage to remain so nice!” she said.
“Oh, it’s all fun,” Robin answered. “I haven’t yet managed to see the
fun of skinning rabbits, but it has to be done: no doubt the humour of
it will strike me in time. Mrs. Lane, when you are better, aren’t you
going out with your menfolk? You’d have an awfully good time!”
Again the guest shuddered.
“My dear,” she said, confidentially, “I was never made for the country.
I can be quite happy while my men-folk are enjoying themselves, so long
as they don’t ask me to join them: I simply loathe a gun, and as for
dangling a worm on a fishing-rod, nothing bores me more, unless it is
casting a fly, which I find actively irritating—cast as I will, the
abominable insect never goes in the right place! I think your veranda is
delightful, as long as no one asks me to look at the scenery or to gaze
at live cows or chickens—or pigs! All, to my mind, are better in their
inanimate forms. You won’t ask me to admire ducklings, will you, Robin,
dear?”
“Never—unless cooked!” said Robin, laughing.
“Oh, then I can admire them whole-heartedly. What an understanding child
you are! No—I really don’t want my ankle to recover too quickly: then I
can lie here with an easy mind, read and write, and realize that
civilization is really not far off whenever I see a motor crawling
painfully along that awful track below. I can also be devoutly thankful
that I am not in it! Life is full of compensations to the injured, I
find—especially in a place like Hill Farm.”
“It is very cheering that you can take it that way,” said Mrs. Hurst,
smiling at the merry, mischievous face—there were times when it seemed
ridiculous to think that Mrs. Lane was really the mother of a boy of
fifteen. “I hope your husband and Barry are as happy.”
“My dear, they’re in ecstasies! Edward says he has never been so
delighted with a place—as for Barry, he shot two rabbits yesterday and
caught three trout and an eel, and apparently life has nothing more to
offer him. We are only haunted by a fear that you will find we give you
too much trouble, and send us back to that appalling hotel!”
Mrs. Hurst laughed outright.
“Why, you’re no trouble at all! Dr. Lane brings in all his game ready
prepared for the table—I wonder does he dream how Robin and I bless him
for it!—and as for you, we give you a bell which you never dream of
ringing. I caught your husband chopping wood yesterday, much to my
horror. He wasn’t in the least impressed by my protests—in fact, he
sent me away, and he and Barry brought the wood in, and filled the box!”
“Don’t dream of interfering with his pastimes!” said his wife. “He chops
wood at home when he has had an unusually aggravating patient—it seems
to work off his pent-up feelings.”
“I hope he has not any feelings of that kind here,” spoke Mrs. Hurst,
with some anxiety.
“Oh, no—it’s just the joy of living, in this case: it has to find
expression somewhere. Barry works his off by singing in his bath, and as
his voice has not quite finished cracking, the effect is blithe, but
peculiar. We’re just a very fortunate family, Mrs. Hurst, and we hope
you’ll keep us a month!”
Robin rose with an air of determination.
“In that case,” she said, briskly, “I’ve simply _got_ to go and thin
those turnips!”