When father came in that evening I was quite lively, but he did not
specially notice it. I hoped he would. I felt wonderfully excited
about Miss Grace Donnithorne. The boys, of course, were also in the
room, but they were generally in a subdued state and disinclined to make
a noise when father was present.
Hannah came up with the dinner. She dumped down the tray on the
sideboard, and put the appetising rump-steak in front of father. It was
rump-steak with onions, and there were fried potatoes, and there was a
good deal of juice coming out of the steak, and oh, such a savoury
smell! Alex began to sniff, and Charley looked with keen interest and
watering eyes at the good food.
"There," said Hannah, placing a mutton bone in front of Alex; "you get
on with that. There's plenty of good meat if you turn it round and cut
from the back part. It's good and wholesome, and fit for young people.
The steak is for the Professor. I've got some roast potatoes; thought
you'd like them."
The roast potatoes were a sop in the pan; but oh, how we did long for a
piece of the steak! That was the worst about father; he really was a
most kindly man, but he was generally, when not absorbed in lecturing--
on which occasions, I was told, he was most animated and lively and all
there--in a sort of dream. He ate his steak now without in the least
perceiving that his children were dining off cold mutton. Had he once
noticed it, he would have taken the mutton bone for himself and given us
the steak. I heard Alex mutter, "It's rather too bad, and he certainly
won't finish it!"
But I sat down close to Alex, and whispered, "Alex, for shame! You know
how he wants it; he isn't at all strong."
Then Alex's grumbles subsided, and he ate his own dinner with boyish
appetite.
After the brief and very simple meal had come to an end the boys left
the room, and the Professor, as we often called him, stood with his back
to the fire. Now was my opportunity.
"Father," I said, "I had a visitor this afternoon."
"Eh? What's that. Dumps?"
"Father, I wish you wouldn't call me Dumps."
"Don't fret me, Rachel; what does it matter what I call you? The thing
is that I address the person who is known to me as my daughter. What
does it matter whether I speak of her as Dumps, or Stumps, or Rachel, or
Annie, or any other title? What's in a name?"
"Oh father! I think there's a good deal in a name. But never mind," I
continued, for I didn't want him to go off into one of those long
dissertations which he was so fond of, quite forgetting the person he
was talking to. So I added hastily, "Miss Grace Donnithorne called.
She said she was a friend of yours. Do you know her?"
"Miss--Grace--Donnithorne?" said father, speaking very slowly and
pausing between each word. "Miss--Grace--Donnithorne?"
"Why, yes, father," I said, and I went close to him now. "She was, oh,
so funny--such a fat, jolly sort of person! Only she didn't like this
house one bit."
"Eh? Eh?" said my father.
He sank into a chair near the fire.
"That is the very chair she sat in."
My father looked round at it.
"The shabbiest chair in the whole house," he said.
"But the most comfy, father."
"Well, all right; tell me about her."
"She sat here, and she made me have a good fire."
"Quite right. Why should you be cold, Dumps?"
"But I thought, father, that you did not want us to be extravagant?"
"It is far more extravagant, let me tell you, Dumps, to get a severe
cold and to have doctors' bills to pay."
I was startled by this sentiment of father's, and treasured it up to
retail to Hannah in the future.
"But tell me more about her," he said.
Then I related exactly what had happened. He was much amused, and after
a time he said, with a laugh, "And so you got tea for her?"
"Yes; she insisted on it. She wouldn't let me off getting that tea for
all the world. I didn't mind it, of course--indeed, I quite enjoyed
it--but what I did find hard was bringing up the hod of coal from the
coal-cellar."
"Good practice, Dumps. Arms are made to be useful."
"So they are," I answered. "And feet are made to run with."
"Of course, father."
"And a girl's little brain is meant to keep a house comfortable."
"But, father, I haven't such a little brain; and I think I could do
something else."
"Could what?" said father, opening his eyes with horror. "What in the
world is more necessary for a girl who is one day to be a woman than to
know how to keep a house comfortable?"
"Yes, yes," I said; "I suppose so."