Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles Part 33

He alluded to supper, and took off the lid of the saucepan to peep in.

She had some stewed beef, with carrots, and the savoury steam ascended to Robert's pleased face.

Very few in Honey Fair managed as did Charlotte East. How she did her housework no one knew. Not a woman, married or single, got through more glove-sewing than Charlotte. Not one kept her house in better order: and her clothes and her brother's were neat and respectable, week-days as well as Sundays. Her work was taken into the warehouse on Sat.u.r.day mornings, and her marketing was done. In the afternoon she cleaned her house, and by four o'clock was ready to sit down to her mending. No one ever saw her in a bustle, and yet all her work was done; and well done.

Perhaps one great secret of it was that she rose very early in the morning, winter and summer.

"Look, Robert, here is a nice book I have bought," said she, putting a periodical into his hands. "It comes out weekly. I shall take it in."

Robert turned over the leaves. "It seems very interesting," he said presently. "Here's a paper that tells all about the Holy Land. And another that tells us how gla.s.s is made; I have often wondered."

"You can read it to us of an evening while I work," said she. "It will be quite a help to our getting on Tom: almost as good as sending him to school. I gave----"

The words were interrupted. The door was violently burst open, and a woman entered the kitchen; knocking at doors before entering was not the fashion in Honey Fair. The intruder was Mrs. Brumm.

"I say, Robert East, did you see anything of my husband?"

"I saw him go into the Horned Ram."

"Then I wish the Horned Ram was into him!" wrathfully retorted Mrs.

Brumm. "He vowed faithfully he'd come home with his wages the first thing after leaving work. He knows I have not a thing in the place for to-morrow--and Dame Buffle looking out for her money. I have a good mind to go down to the Horned Ram, and be on to him!"

Robert East offered no opinion upon this delicate point. He remembered the last time Mrs. Brumm had gone to the Horned Ram to be "on" to her husband, and what it had produced. A midnight quarrel that disturbed the slumbers of Honey Fair.

"Who was along of him?" pursued she.

"Three or four of them. Hubbard and Jones, I saw go in: and Adam Thorneycroft."

A quick rising of the head, as if startled, and a faint accession of colour, told that one of those names had struck, perhaps unpleasantly, on the ear of Charlotte East. "Where are your own earnings?" she asked of Mrs. Brumm.

"I have had to take them to Bankes's," was the rueful reply. "It's a good deal now, and they're in a regular tantrum this week, and wouldn't even wait till Monday. They threatened to tell Brumm, and it frightened me out of my seventeen senses. And now, for him to go into that dratted Horned Ram with his wages! and me without a pennypiece! It's not more for the necessaries I want to get in, than for the things that is in p.a.w.n. I can't iron nothing: the irons is there."

Charlotte, busy still, turned round. "I would not put in irons, and such things, that I wanted to use."

"I dare say you wouldn't!" tartly responded Mrs. Brumm. "One has to put in what one's got, and the things our husbands won't miss the sight of.

It's fine to be you, Charlotte East, setting yourself up for a lady, and never putting your foot inside the p.a.w.n-shop, with your clean hands and your clean kitchen on a Sat.u.r.day night, sitting down to a hot supper, while the rest of us is a-scrubbing!"

Charlotte laughed good-humouredly. "If I tried to set myself up for a lady, I could not be one. I work as hard as anybody; only I get it done betimes."

Mrs. Brumm sniffed--having no ready answer at hand. And at that moment Tom East, encased in black, peeped out of the brewhouse, where he had been sent by Charlotte to wash the dye off his hands. "Sakes alive!"

uttered Mrs. Brumm, aghast at the sight.

"Jacky's worse than me," responded Tom, rather proud of having to say so much. Robert explained to her how it had happened.

"And our Jacky's as bad as that!" she cried. "Won't I wring it out of him!"

"Nonsense," said Robert; "it was an accident. Boys will be boys."

"Yes, they will: and it's not the men that have to wash for 'em and keep 'em clean!" retorted Mrs. Brumm, terribly wrathful. "And me at a standstill for my irons! And that beast of a Brumm stopping out."

"I will lend you my irons," said Charlotte.

"I won't take 'em," was the ungracious reply. "If I don't get my own, I won't borrow none. Brumm, he'll be looking out for his Sunday clean shirt to-morrow, and he won't get it; and that'll punish him more than anything else. There's not a man in Honey Fair as likes to go sprucer on a Sunday than Brumm."

"So much the better," said Charlotte. "When men lose pride in their appearance, they are apt to lose it in their conduct."

"You must always put in your word for folks, Charlotte East, let 'em be ever so bad," was Mrs. Brumm's parting salutation, as she went off and shut the door with a bang.

Meanwhile Timothy Carter, Mrs. Carter's husband, had turned into his own dwelling, after leaving Robert East. The first thing to greet him was the pail of water. Mrs. Carter had completed her grate, and was dashing her water on to the floor. Timothy received it on his legs.

"What's that for?" demanded Timothy, who was a meek and timid little man.

"Why do you brush in so sharp, then?" cried she. "Who was to know you was a-coming?"

Timothy had not "brushed in sharp;" he had gone in quietly. He stood ruefully shaking the wet from his legs, first one, then the other, and afterwards began to pick his way on tiptoe towards the fireplace.

"Now, it's of no use your attempting to sit down yet," rebuked his wife, in her usual cross accents. "There ain't no room for you at the fire, and there ain't no warmth in it; it's but this blessed minute lighted.

Sit yourself on that table, again the wall, and then your legs'll be in the dry."

"And there I may sit for an hour, for you'll be all that time before you have finished, by the looks on't," he ventured to remonstrate.

"And half another hour to the end of it," answered she. "There's Betsy, as ought to be helping, gadding out somewhere ever since she came home at seven o'clock."

"You says to me, says you, 'You come home to-night, Tim, as soon as work's over, and don't go drinking!' You know you did," repeated Timothy in an injured tone.

"And it's a good thing as you have come, or you'd have heard my tongue in a way you wouldn't like!" was Mrs. Carter's reply.

Timothy sighed. That tongue was the two-edged sword of his life: how dreaded, none but himself could tell. He had mounted the table in obedience to orders, but he now got off again.

"What are you after now?" shrilly demanded Mrs. Carter, who was on her knees, scouring the bricks.

"I want my pipe and 'baccy."

"You stop where you are," was the imperative answer, "and wait till I have time to get it;" and Timothy humbly sat down again.

"You might get this done afore night, 'Lizabeth, as I've said over and over again," cried he, plucking up a little spirit. "When a man comes home tired, even if there ain't a bit o' supper for him, he expects a morsel o' fire to sit down to, so as he can smoke his pipe in quiet. It cows him, you see, to find his place in this ruck, where there ain't a dry spot to put the sole of his foot on, and nothing but a table with unekal legs to sit upon, and----"

"I might get it done afore?" shrieked Mrs. Carter. "Afore! When, through that Betsy's laziness, leaving everything on my shoulders, I couldn't get in my gloving till four o'clock this afternoon! Every earthly thing have I had to do since then. I raked out my fire----"

"What's the good of raking out the fire?" interposed Timothy.

"Goodness help the simpleton! Wanting to know the good of raking out the fire--as if he was born yesterday! Can a grate be black-leaded while it's hot, pray?"

"It might be black-leaded at some other time," debated he. "In a morning, perhaps."

"I dare say it might, if I had not my gloving to do," she answered, trembling with wrath. "When folks takes out shop work, they has to get on with that--and is glad to do it. Where would you be if I earned nothing? It isn't much of a roof we should have over our heads, with your paltry fifteen or sixteen shillings a-week. You be nothing but a parer, remember."

"There's no need to disparage of me, 'Lizabeth," he rejoined, with a meek little cough. "You knowed I was a parer before you ventured on me."

"Just take your legs up higher, or you'll be knocking my cap with your dirty boots," said Mrs. Carter, who was nearing the table in her scrubbing.