Part 3 (1/2)

Avice knew that Uncle Dan was usually a man of fewer words than this.

For him to be thus loquacious showed very strong emotion or irritation of some sort. She went round to the back door, and before she reached it, she heard enough to let her guess the sort of welcome she might expect to receive.

Just inside the open door stood Aunt Filomena, a thin, red-faced, voluble woman, with her arms akimbo, pouring out words as fast as they could come; and in the yard, just outside the door, opposite to her, stood her daughter Ankaret, in exactly the same att.i.tude, also thin, red-faced, and voluble. The two were such precise counterparts of one another that Avice had hard work to keep her gravity. Inside the house, Susanna and Mildred, and outside Eleanor, were acting as interested spectators; the funniest part of the scene being that neither of them listened to a word said by the other, but each ran at express speed on her own rails. The youngest daughter, Bertha, was nowhere to be seen.

For a minute the whole appearance of things struck Avice as so excessively comical that she could scarcely help laughing. But then she realised how shocking it really was. What sort of mothers, in their turn, could such daughters be expected to make? She waited for a moment's pause, and when it occurred, which was not for some minutes, she said--

”Aunt Filomena!”

”Oh, you're there, are you?” demanded the amiable Filomena. ”You just thank the stars you've got no children! If ever an honest woman were plagued with six good-for-nothing, s.l.u.ttish, slatternly shrews of girls as me! Here's that Ankaret--I've told her ten times o'er to wash the tubs out, and get 'em ready for the pickling, and I come to see if they are done, and they've never been touched, and my lady sitting upstairs a-making her gown fine for Sunday! I declare, I'll--”

Her intentions were drowned in an equally shrill scream from Miss Ankaret. ”You never told me a word--not once! And 'tain't my place to scour them tubs out, neither. It's Susanna as always--”

”Then I won't!” broke in Susanna. ”And you might be ashamed of yourself, I should think, to put such messy work on me when Eleanor--”

”You'd best let me alone!” fiercely chimed in Eleanor.

”Oh dear, dear!” cried Avice, putting her hands over her ears. ”My dear cousins, are you going to drive each other deaf? Why, I would rather scour out twenty tubs than fight over them like this! Are you not Christian women? Come, now, who is going to scour the tubs? I will take one myself if you will do the others. Who will join me?”

And Avice began to turn up her sleeves in good earnest. ”No, Avice, don't you; you'll spoil your gown,” said Eleanor, looking ashamed of her vehemence. ”See, I'll get them done. Mildred, won't you help?”

”Well, I don't mind if I do,” was the rather lazy answer.

But Ankaret and Susanna declined to touch the work, the latter cynically offering to lend her ap.r.o.n to Avice.

As Avice scrubbed away, she began to regret her errand. To be afflicted with such a lifelong companion as one of these lively young ladies would be far worse than solitude. But where was the youngest?--the quiet little Bertha, who took after her peaceable father, and whom Avice had rarely heard to speak? She asked Eleanor for her youngest sister.

”Oh, she's somewhere,” said Eleanor carelessly.

”She took her work down to the brook,” added Mildred. ”She's been crying her eyes out over Emma's going.”

”Ay, Emma and Bertha are the white chicks among the black,” said Eleanor, laughing; ”they'll miss each other finely, I've no doubt.”

Avice finished her work, returned Susanna's ap.r.o.n, and instead of requesting advice from her Aunt, went down to the brook in search of Bertha. She found her sitting on a green bank, with very red eyes.

”Well, my dear heart?” said Avice kindly to Bertha.

The kind tone brought poor Bertha's tears back. She could only sob out--”Emma's gone!”

”And thou art all alone, my child,” said Avice, stroking her hair. She knew that loneliness in a crowd is the worst loneliness of all. ”Well, so am I; and mine errand this very day was to see if I could prevail on thy mother to grant me one of her young maids to dwell with me. What sayest thou? shall I ask her for thee?”

”O Cousin! I would be so--” Bertha's ecstatic tone went no farther. It was in quite a different voice that she said--”But then there's Father!

Oh no, Cousin. Thank you so much, but it won't do.”

”That will we ask Father,” said Avice.

”Father couldn't get on, with me and Emma both away,” said Bertha, in a tone which she tried to make cheerful. ”He'd be quite lost--I know he would.”

”Well, but--” began Avice.

”Then he'd find his self again as fast as he could,” said a gruff voice, and they looked up in surprise to see old Dan standing behind them.