The Three Miss Kings 4

The Three Miss Kings 4

Having assumed this raiment, she followed her sisters up the cliff

path to the house; and there she found them talking volubly with Mrs.

Dunn, who had brought them, with Sam's best respects, a freshly caught

schnapper for their breakfast. Mrs. Dunn was their nearest neighbour,

their only help in domestic emergencies, and of late days their devoted

and confidential friend. Sam, her husband, had for some years been a

ministering angel in the back yard, a purveyor of firewood and mutton,

a killer of pigs, and so on; and he also had taken the orphan girls

under his protection, so far as he could, since they had been "left."

 

"Look at this!" cried Eleanor, holding it up--it took both hands to

hold it, for it weighed about a dozen pounds; "did you ever see such

a fish, Elizabeth? Breakfast indeed! Yes, we'll have it to breakfast

to-day and to-morrow too, and for dinner and tea and supper. Oh, how

stupid Sam is! Why didn't he send it to market? Why didn't he take it

down to the steamer? He's not a man of business a bit, Mrs. Dunn--he'll

never make his fortune this way. Get the pan for me, Patty, and set the

fat boiling. We'll fry a bit this very minute, and you shall stay and

help us to eat it, Mrs. Dunn."

 

"Oh, my dear Miss Nelly--"

 

"Elizabeth, take charge of her, and don't let her go. Don't listen to

her. We have not seen her for three whole days, and we want her to

tell us about the furniture. Keep her safe, and Patty and I will have

breakfast ready in a minute."

 

And in a short time the slice of schnapper was steaming on the table--a

most simply appointed breakfast table, but very clean and dainty in

its simplicity--and Mrs. Dunn sat down with her young _protégées,_ and

sipped her tea and gave them matronly advice, with much enjoyment of

the situation.

 

Her advice was excellent, and amounted to this--"Don't you go for to

take a stick o' that there furniture out o' the place." They were

to have an auction, she said; and go to Melbourne with the proceeds

in their pockets. Hawkins would be glad o' the beds, perhaps, with

his large family; as Mrs. Hawkins had a lovely suite in green rep,

she wouldn't look at the rest o' the things, which, though very

comf'able, no doubt--very nice indeed, my dears--were not what _ladies

and gentlemen_ had in their houses _now-a-days_. "As for that there

bureau"--pointing to it with her teaspoon--"if you set that up in a

Melbourne parlour, why, you'd just have all your friends laughing at

you."

 

The girls looked around the room with quick eyes, and then looked at

each other with half-grave and half amused dismay. Patty spoke up with

her usual promptness.

 

"It doesn't matter in the least to us what other people like to have

in their houses," said she. "And that bureau, as it happens, is very

valuable, Mrs. Dunn: it belonged to one of the governors before we had

it, and Mr. Brion says there is no such cabinet work in these days. He

says it was made in France more than a hundred years ago."

 

"Yes, my dear. So you might say that there was no such stuff now-a-days

as what them old gowns was made of, that your poor ma wore when she was

a girl. But you wouldn't go for to wear them old gowns now. I daresay

the bureau was a grand piece o' furniture once, but it's out o' fashion

now, and when a thing is out o' fashion it isn't worth anything. Sell

it to Mr. Brion if you can; it would be a fine thing for a lawyer's

office, with all them little shelves and drawers. He might give you

a five-pound note for it, as he's a friend like, and you could buy a

handsome new cedar chiffonnier for that."

 

"Mrs. Dunn," said Eleanor, rising to replenish the worthy matron's

plate, with Patty's new butter and her own new bread, "we are not going

to sell that bureau--no, not to anybody. It has associations, don't you

understand?--and also a set of locks that no burglar could pick if he

tried ever so. We are not going to sell our bureau--nor our piano--"

 

"Oh, but, my dear Miss Nelly--"

 

"My dear Mrs. Dunn, it cost ninety guineas, I do assure you, only five

years ago, and it is as modern and fashionable as heart could wish."

 

"Fashionable! why, it might as well be a cupboard bedstead, in that

there common wood. Mrs. Hawkins gave only fifty pounds for hers, and it

is real walnut and carved beautiful."

 

"We are not going to sell that piano, my dear woman." Though Nelly

appeared to wait meekly upon her elder sisters' judgment, it often

happened that she decided a question that was put before them in this

prompt way. "And I'll tell you for why," she continued playfully. "You

shut your eyes for five minutes--wait, I'll tie my handkerchief over

them"--and she deftly blindfolded the old woman, whose stout frame

shook with honest giggles of enjoyment at this manifestation of Miss

Nelly's fun. "Now," said Nelly, "don't laugh--don't remember that you

are here with us, or that there is such a thing as a cupboard bedstead

in the world. Imagine that you are floating down the Rhine on a

moonlight night--no, by the way, imagine that you are in a drawing-room

in Melbourne, furnished with a lovely green rep suite, and a handsome

new cedar chiffonnier, and a carved walnut piano--and that a beautiful,

fashionable lady, with scent on her pocket-handkerchief, is sitting at

that piano. And--and listen for a minute."

 

Whereupon, lifting her hands from the old woman's shoulders, she

crossed the room, opened the piano noiselessly, and began to play her

favourite German airs--the songs of the people, that seem so much

sweeter and more pathetic and poetic than the songs of any other

people--mixing two or three of them together and rendering them with a

touch and __EXPRESSION__ that worked like a spell of enchantment upon them

all. Elizabeth sat back in her chair and lost herself in the visions

that appeared to her on the ceiling. Patty spread her arms over the

table and leaned towards the piano, breathing a soft accompaniment

of German words in tender, sighing undertones, while her warm pulses

throbbed and her eyes brightened with the unconscious passion that was

stirred in her fervent soul. Even the weather-beaten old charwoman fell

into a reverent attitude as of a devotee in church.

 

"There," said Eleanor, taking her hands from the keys and shutting up

the instrument, with a suddenness that made them jump. "Now I ask you,

Mrs. Dunn, as an honest and truthful woman--_can_ you say that that is

a piano to be _sold?_"

 

"Beautiful, my dear, beautiful--it's like being in heaven to hear the

like o' that," the old woman responded warmly, pulling the bandage

from her eyes. "But you'd draw music from an old packing case, I

do believe." And it was found that Mrs. Dunn was unshaken in her

conviction that pianos were valuable in proportion to their external

splendour, and their tone sweet and powerful by virtue solely of the

skill of the fingers that played upon them. If Mr. King had given

ninety guineas for "that there"--about which she thought there must be

some mistake--she could only conclude that his rural innocence had been

imposed upon by wily city tradesmen.

 

"Well," said Nelly, who was now busy collecting the crockery on the

breakfast table, "we must see if we can't furbish it up, Mrs. Dunn.

We can paint a landscape on the front, perhaps, and tie some pink

satin ribbons on the handles. Or we might set it behind a curtain, or

in a dark corner, where it will be heard and not seen. But keep it

we must--both that and the bureau. You would not part with those two

things, Elizabeth?"

 

"My dear," said Elizabeth, "it would grieve me to part with anything."

 

"But I think," said Patty, "Mrs. Dunn may be right about the other

furniture. What would it cost to take all our things to Melbourne, Mrs.

Dunn?"

 

"Twice as much as they are worth, Miss Patty--three times as much.

Carriage is awful, whether by sea or land."

 

"It is a great distance," said Patty, thoughtfully, "and it would be

very awkward. We cannot take them with us, for we shall want first

to find a place to put them in, and we could not come back to fetch

them. I think we had better speak to Mr. Hawkins, Elizabeth, and, if

he doesn't want them, have a little auction. We must keep some things,

of course; but I am sure Mr. Hawkins would let them stay till we could

send for them, or Mr. Brion would house them for us."

 

"We should feel very free that way, and it would be nice to buy new

things," said Eleanor.

 

"Or we might not have to buy--we might put this money to the other,"

said Patty. "We might find that we did not like Melbourne, and then we

could go to Europe at once without any trouble."

 

"And take the pianner to Europe along with you?" inquired Mrs. Dunn.

"And that there bureau?"

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IV.

 

 

DEPARTURE.

 

 

They decided to sell their furniture--with the exception of the piano

and the bureau, and sundry treasures that could bestowed away in the

latter capacious receptacle; and, on being made acquainted with the

fact, the obliging Mr. Hawkins offered to take it as it stood for a

lump sum of £50, and his offer was gratefully accepted. Sam Dunn was

very wroth over this transaction, for he knew the value of the dairy

and kitchen utensils and farm-yard appliances, which went to the new

tenant along with the household furniture that Mrs. Dunn, as a candid

friend, had disparaged and despised; and he reproached Elizabeth,

tenderly, but with tears in his eyes, for having allowed herself to

be "done" by not taking Mr. Brion's advice upon the matter, and shook

his head over the imminent fate of these three innocent and helpless

lambs about to fling themselves into the jaws of the commercial

wolves of Melbourne. Elizabeth told him that she did not like to be

always teasing Mr. Brion, who had already done all the legal business

necessary to put them in possession of their little property, and had

refused to take any fee for his trouble; that, as they had nothing more

to sell, no buyer could "do" them again; and that, finally, they all

thought fifty pounds a great deal of money, and were quite satisfied

with their bargain. But Sam, as a practical man, continued to shake his

head, and bade her remember him when she was in trouble and in need

of a faithful friend--assuring her, with a few strong seafaring oaths

(which did not shock her in the least, for they were meant to emphasise

the sincerity of his protestations), that she and her sisters should

never want, if he knew it, while he had a crust of bread and a breath in his body.