"Father is awake," I said, "and he complains of the noise we are
making."
"Noise?" cried Alex. "Why, we are as mum as mice!"
"People must breathe, you know," said Agnes in what I considered a very
impertinent way.
I stared at her. She had no right to speak like that of my father, the
great Professor Grant; for my father was a member of the Royal Society,
no less, and you can imagine that to hear such talk from a silly little
girl like Agnes Swan was, to say the least of it, disagreeable. So I
drew myself up; but then I caught Von Marlo's eyes, and I felt soothed,
for he seemed to understand.
"If the Professor wishes it," he said, "we will, of course, hardly speak
at all.--It might be best," he added, turning to Alex, "if we all went
away. What do you think?"
"Please yourself, Von," said Alex, speaking in a very patronising way,
and flinging himself back in a deep chair. "Squibs and Charley and I
stay; and as you are the quietest of the party, and inclined to
patronise Dumps, I don't see why you should go."
Von Marlo came straight up to me and said:
"Can I do anything for you? They say I patronise you, but that is not
true. I don't exactly know what they mean by patronise, but I will do
all I can to help you, for you are quite the nicest little girl I have
met since I came to England."
Agnes and Rita seemed neither of them to thoroughly appreciate these
remarks of Von Marlo's, for he was really the biggest and most
imposing-looking of the four boys. Even Alex, who was a handsome
fellow, looked very young beside him. As to me, I felt soothed. Of
course, you must understand that if you have been called Dumps all your
life, and told to your face that you haven't one vestige of good looks,
it must be a sort of pleasure to have a person suddenly inform you that
you are--oh! better than good-looking--the very prettiest girl he has
seen in the whole of the country. I felt, therefore, a flush of triumph
stealing to my cheeks, and then I said, "Please keep things as quiet as
you can. I must go to the kitchen to get some tea for father. Please
don't let them be noisy."
"I'll sit on them if they are," said Von Marlo.
But Alex called out, "Go along, Von, and help her; that'll be the best
way. Good gracious! she's in such a state of mind, because you are
noticing her and bolstering her up, that she will fall, as likely as
not, going down those slippery backstairs. Go along with her, old chap,
and help her."
"Yes, come," I said, for I could not resist it.
So Von Marlo and I found ourselves in the big hall; then he took my hand
and we went along the passage, and then down another passage, and then
we opened a door and I called to Hannah.
"Hannah, are you downstairs?"
We were looking into pitch-black darkness, but we heard a muffled voice
say, "Yes, Miss Rachel? Sakes alive! What's wanted now?"
Then Hannah appeared at the foot of the stairs, holding a lighted
candle.
"I'm coming down," I said, "and I'm bringing a gentleman with me."
Hannah very nearly fell in her amazement, but I went steadily down, Von
Marlo following me.
"It is a very old house," I whispered, "and some people say it is
haunted. But you are not afraid of ghosts, are you?"
"I think they are the jolliest things in the world!" was his reply.
He said the word jolly in a very funny way, as though he was not
accustomed to the word, and it sounded quite sweet.
At last we got to the lower regions, and then, guided by Hannah's
candle--which was really only like a very little spark of light--we
found our way into the kitchen.
"Once this was a grand house and grand people lived here," I said.
"Father lives here now because it belongs to the college. The house is
a great deal too big for us, but it is a glorious place for
hide-and-seek. This is the kitchen--monstrous dinners used to be cooked
here."
"Now then, Miss Rachel, what do you want?" said Hannah. "And I think
young gents as ought to be at school ought to keep out of the
Professor's kitchen. That's what I think."
"Oh, please, Hannah," I said, "this gentleman is from over the seas--he
comes from Holland, where the beautiful tulips are grown, and his name
is Mr Von Marlo."
"Catch me trying to say a mouthful of a name like that!" was Hannah's
rejoinder.
"He is exceedingly kind," I continued, "and he is going to help us."
"Yes, I will help you if you will let me," said Von Marlo, speaking in
his slow and rather distinct way, and not gabbling his words as we
English do.
"I want tea and toast and an egg for father; he is waiting for them, and
we must hurry," I said. "Hannah, be as quick as you can."
"My word," said Hannah, "what a fuss!"
She was really a kind creature. She must have been good to live with us
in that queer old house, for she was actually the only servant we kept.
She must have been brave, too, to spend so much of her time in that
desolate kitchen and in those black passages, for gas had never been
laid on in the bottom portion of the old house, and it smelt very damp,
and I am sure the rats had a good time there at night. But Hannah,
forty-five years of age, with a freckled face and reddish hair, and high
cheek-bones and square shoulders, had never known the meaning of the
word fear.
"Ghosts?" she would cry. "Don't talk nonsense to me! Rats? Well, I
guess they're more afraid of me than I am of them. Loneliness? I'm a
sight too busy to be lonely. I does my work, and I eats my vittals, and
when bedtime comes I sleeps like a top. I'm fond of the Professor, and
proud of him, he's so cliver; and I'm fond of Miss Rachel, whom I've
known since she was born, and of the boys, although they be handfuls."
This was Hannah's creed; she had no fear, and she was fond of us. But
she had a rough tongue, and could be very rude at times, and could make
things unpleasant for us children unless we humoured her.
It was Von Marlo, the Dutch boy, who humoured her now. He offered to
cut the bread for toast, and he not only offered, but he went boldly to
the cupboard, found a loaf, and cut most delicate slices, and set to
work toasting them before a clear little fire in a small new range at
one end of the kitchen before Hannah had time to expostulate. Then he
suggested that father's egg should be poached, not boiled, and he found
a saucepan and put it on the fire and prepared to poach the egg. And
when Hannah said, "My, what a fuss!" he found the egg, broke it into the
boiling water, poached it beautifully, and put it on the toast. Really,
he was a wonderful boy; even Hannah declared that never had she seen his
like.
The tea was made fragrant and strong, and we put it on a little tray
with a white cloth, and Von Marlo carried it for me up the dark stairs.
We reached the hall, and then we stood and faced each other.
"You are going up all those other stairs with that tray?" said Von
Marlo. "Then I insist upon carrying it for you."
"But suppose father should come out? He sometimes does, you know," I
whispered.
"And if he does, what matter?" said Von Marlo. "He won't eat us! Come
along, Miss Rachel."
I was very glad he did not call me Dumps. He must have heard Hannah
call me Miss Rachel, for, as far as the boys were concerned, I might
have been christened Dumps, for they never addressed me as anything
else.
We went up the stairs, I going first to lead the way, and Von Marlo
following, bearing the little tray with its fragrant tea, hot toast, and
poached egg. All went well, and nothing would have happened except the
pleasant memory of our little adventure if suddenly at the top of the
stairs we had not encountered the stern face of father himself. There
was gas in that part of the house, and it had been turned on; father
looked absolutely black with rage.
"What is the meaning of this?" he said. "Who are you? Von Marlo, I
declare! And what, may I ask, are you doing in my house, and venturing
up to my rooms, sir?--What is the meaning of this, Rachel? I shall
punish you severely.--Go downstairs, sir; go down at once, and leave the
house."
If it had been Squibs, even had it been Alex or Charley, I think he
would have turned at once at the sight of that angry, very fierce face;
but Von Marlo was like Hannah--he knew no fear. He said quietly, "You
are mistaken, sir; I have done nothing that I should be ashamed of.
Your son, Mr Alex, invited me to come into the house, and he also
invited me to have tea downstairs. Your daughter went to the kitchen to
prepare your tea, and I offered to assist her. It is a way we have in
my country, sir, to assist the ladies when they have more to do than
they can well accomplish. It is the way we gentlemen act, Professor."
There was something so quaint in Von Marlo's utterance that even father
was appeased. He murmured, "I forgot you were a foreigner. Well then,
thanks; but go away now, for goodness' sake.--Rachel, take the tea into
my bedroom.--Von Marlo, you must go; I cannot have any one in my house
this evening; my head is very bad."
"Good-bye, Mr Von Marlo," I said; "and thank you, thank you."
Von Marlo boldly took my hand in the presence of father, and then bolted
downstairs, I regret to say, with extreme noise; for, notwithstanding
his gentlemanly manners, his boots were thick and rough, and the stairs
were destitute of carpets.
"Lay the tea on the table, Rachel," said my father.
He pushed his hands through his hair, which now seemed to stand up on
his head and gave him a wild appearance.
"What does this mean? Tell me at once. Speak, Rachel."
"I think Mr Von Marlo explained, father. I am awfully sorry. I did
ask Agnes and Rita Swan to tea this evening. You said--or at least you
never said that I wasn't to ask them."
"I never gave you leave to ask any one. How dare you invite people to
my house without my permission?"
"I am lonely sometimes, father."
I said the words in a sad voice; I could not help it; there was a lump
in my throat. Father gazed at me, and all of a sudden his manner
altered. He seated himself in a chair, and motioned to me to take
another. He pulled the little tray with the nice tea towards him,
poured out a cup, and drank it. Then he looked at the poached egg, put
on his glasses, and gazed at it more fixedly.
"That's a queer sort of thing," he said; and then he ate it with
considerable relish. "It's very good," he said when he had finished it.
"Who did it?"
"Mr Von Marlo."
"Rachel, you must be mad!"
"No, father; he isn't an English boy, you know. He helped me; he is a
very nice boy."
My father sank back in his chair, and suddenly, to my amazement and
relief, he burst into a roar of laughter.
"Well, well!" he said, "I admit that I was in a temper; and I was rude
to the lad, too. If you ever have headaches like mine you will get into
passions too, Rachel. Pray that you may never have them; my misery is
something too awful; and when I saw that lad, with his great dark head,
and that hair of his coming straight down to his eyebrows, marching up
the stairs with you, I really thought a burglar had got into the house.
But, after all, it was only the Dutch lad, and he is clever enough, and
doesn't know our English customs. And to think that he poached an egg!"
"And he made the toast, father."
My father laughed again.
"Whatever he did, he has cured my headache," was his next remark; "I
feel as right as a trivet. I'll come downstairs, and I'll turn those
lads out, and those girls."
"But, father--father darling--they have come by invitation. It isn't
their fault."
My father took my hand.
"So you are lonely, Dumps?" he said. "And why in the world should you
be lonely?"
"I want friends," I said. "I want some one to love me."
"All women make that sort of cry," was his next remark. He pulled me
close to him and raised my head and looked into my face.
"You have a nice little face of your own," he said, "and some day you
will find--But, pshaw! why talk nonsense to the child? How old are you,
Dumps?"
"I'll be sixteen in six months," I said. "It is a long way off to have
a birthday, but it will come in six months."
"And then you'll be seventeen, and then eighteen, and, hey presto!
you'll be a woman. My goodness, child! put off the evil day as long as
you can. Keep a child as long as possible."
"But, father, most children are happy."
"And you are not? Good gracious me! what more do you want?"
"I don't know, father; but it seems to me that I want something."
"Well, look here, you want girls about you, do you?"
"Yes, some girls."
"And you think Rita and Agnes Swan, the daughters of our local doctor,
quite delightful companions?"