Part 1 (1/2)
Better than Play.
by Mabel Quiller-Couch.
CHAPTER I.
WAs.h.i.+NG DAY TEMPERS.
Down at the Henders' cottage all was misery and discomfort; the house was full of bad temper, steam, and the smell of soap-suds. It was was.h.i.+ng-day, and the children hated was.h.i.+ng-day. For one thing, Aunt Emma was always very cross, and for another, they never knew what to do with themselves. They were not allowed indoors, for they ”choked up the place,” she said, ”and there wasn't room to move,”; so they had to stay outside; but they must make no noise, for she could not bear it, and they must not wander away to play, for they might be wanted at any minute, to run an errand, or chop up a few sticks. Bella, too, the eldest of them all, was needed every now and again to hang a few things on the bushes; but that was all the break they had in the weary day.
Bella often wished her aunt would let her do more to help her. She was sure she could, and it would have been ever so much more pleasant than standing around seeing everything go wrong, yet doing nothing.
Her aunt was always scolding her for being idle, and grumbling at the amount of work she herself had to do; yet, if Bella attempted to help in any way, there was a great to-do, and her aunt grew so angry about it that Bella soon gave up attempting. It grieved her dreadfully, though.
The home had been so different when her mother was alive, so neat and pretty, and all of them so happy.
There had rarely been any scolding, and certainly there was never any grumbling about the work.
”Why, work is pleasure, if you take it in the right spirit,” Mrs. Hender used to say, cheerfully; ”it means life and happiness--but everything depends, of course, on the spirit in which you take it.”
Certainly Aunt Emma did not take it in 'the right spirit.' She was always grumbling, and never what you would call cheerful. If she had to go up the few stairs to the bedrooms, she grumbled, and if she had to go to the door to answer a knock, she grumbled. If the children used an extra cup, or the windows got dirty, or the steps muddy, she complained bitterly of the hards.h.i.+p it was to her. And few things are harder to bear than to have to live with a perpetual grumbler, to listen to constant complaints, --especially, too, if the grumbler will not let any one help her to do the work she grumbles so much about. A grumbler spoils every one's pleasure, and gets none herself; and the worst of it is, it is a disease that grows on one terribly.
In the Henders' case it was doing great harm, as Bella was old enough to see. Her father had always, in the old days, come home after his work, and, after they had all had a cosy meal together, had worked in the garden through the summer evenings, or, in the winter, sat by the fire reading the paper or a book to his wife while she sewed. He had long since ceased all that, though, for one can't sit and read in any comfort in a kitchen that's all of a muddle, and to a woman who is grumbling all the time; and soon he found there was a cosy, quiet resting-place at the 'Red Lion,'
with plenty of cheerfulness and good temper, and no grumbling.
The children, too, never came indoors if they could stay out, and as Aunt Emma complained of their noise if they played in the garden, they naturally went farther away, if they could manage to escape.
But for Bella, this was not so easy. She was useful, though her aunt would never admit it, and she liked to have her within call. There was nowhere that Bella cared to go, except to Mrs. Langley's, farther down the lane, and thither Miss Hender did not allow her to go very often, though no one knew why.
Mrs. Langley, or 'Aunt Maggie,' as the children had been taught to call her, had been their mother's greatest friend and nearest neighbour, and during their mother's lifetime they had felt almost as much at home in her house as in their own. Little Margaret, indeed, had been called after her.
Altogether life was very, very different now, and to Bella's mind the present seemed anything but a happy time.
She sat on the step to-day, and looked soberly at the sky. The weather was dull and gloomy, with a moisture in the air which would entirely keep the clothes from drying; and a bad drying day is in itself enough to try the temper of the most amiable of washerwomen.
”Oh, I do wish the sun would s.h.i.+ne,” she thought anxiously; ”it would make such a difference.” Bella spent her days in a state of mingled hope and dread--hope that things would happen to please her aunt, and dread of things happening to ruffle her.
The baker's cart drew up at the gate, and the man, springing lightly down, came up the garden-path with a basket of loaves. ”Now she will be vexed at having to answer the door,” thought Bella. ”I wish I knew what bread to take in.”
That, however, was more than she dare do, so she contented herself with going in, to warn her aunt of the baker's approach.
”The baker is coming, Aunt Emma,” she said quietly.
”Well, s'posing he is! Surely you'm old enough to take the bread from him; or do you want me to do it while you look on? It won't soil your hands to touch a loaf of bread.”
”How many loaves shall I take in?” asked Bella patiently.
”Oh, I don't know! I don't know what we've got, and I can't stay to see.
Three would do, I should hope.”
Bella looked at the baker's basket, and her spirit sank; there were pale loaves and brown ones, and loaves of all shapes. Which should she take?
Which would please her aunt? At last she picked up what she thought was a nice tempting-looking one. Surely that would do for one, she thought.