by Berta Ruck
CHAPTER II
TWO GIRLS IN A KITCHEN
LITTLE Million, looking very cheery and trim in her black gown and herwhite apron, and the neat little cap perched upon her glossy black hair,smiled welcomingly upon me as I came into the kitchen.
I like Million's nice smile and her Cockney chatter about the Soldiers'Orphanage where she was brought up and trained for domestic service, andabout her places before she came here. Aunt Anastasia considers that itis so demoralising to gossip with the lower orders. But Millions is theonly girl of my own age in London with whom I have the chance ofgossiping!
She likes me, too. She considers that Miss Beatrice treats her as if shewere a human being instead of a machine. She tossed the paper-coveredCelandine Novelette that she had been reading into the drawer ofthe kitchen-table among the lead spoons and the skewers and thecooking-forks, and then she spread the table with a clean tea-cloth, andbrought out the colander with the lettuce and the cucumber and the cressthat I was going to cut up into salad; doing everything as if she likedhelping me.
"There, now! What a mercy I left the kitchen window open. Now I haven'tseen the new moon through the glass!" she exclaimed, as she put allready before me--the hard-boiled egg, the mustard, sugar, pepper, salt,oil, and vinegar--for me to make the salad-dressing. "Miss Beatrice,look at it through the open window--there, just to the right of thatlittle pink cloud--turn your money, and you'll get a wish."
I peeped out of the window, and caught sight of that slender festoon ofsilver swung in the sky above the roses of the garden trellis.
"I've no money to turn," I smiled ruefully, "never have."
"Turn some o' mine, Miss," said Million. "I've got four-and-six herethat I'm going to put into the Post Office Savings Bank to-morrow."Million is extraordinarily thrifty. "There you are. Wished your wish,Miss Beatrice?"
"Oh, yes, I've wished it," I said. "Always the same wish with me, youknow, Million. Always a perfectly hopeless one. It's always, always thatsome millionaire may leave me a fortune one day, and that I shall bevery rich, rolling in money."
"D'you think so much of money, then, Miss Beatrice?" said Million,bustling over the black-and-white chequered linoleum to the range, andsetting the lid on to her saucepan full of potatoes. "Rich people aren'talways happy----"
"That's their own fault for not knowing how to spend the money!"
"Ah, but I was readin' a sweetly pretty tale all about that just now.'Love or Money,' that was the name of it," said Million, nodding at thekitchen-table drawer in which she keeps her novelettes, "and it saidthese very words: 'Money doesn't buy everythin'.'"
"H'm! It would buy most of the things I want!" I declared as I slicedaway at my cucumber. "The lovely country house where I'd have crowds ofpeople, all kinds of paralysingly interesting people to stay with me!The heavenly times in London, going everywhere and seeing everything!The motors! And, oh, Million"--I heard my voice shake with yearning as Ipronounced the magic name of what every woman thinks of when she thinksof having money--"oh, Million, the clothes I'd get! If I had decentclothes I'd be decent-looking. I know I should."
"Why, Miss Beatrice, I've always thought you was a very nice-lookingyoung lady, anyhow," said our little maid staunchly. "And to-nightyou're really pretty; I was just passing the remark to myself when youcame in. Look at yourself in my little glass----"
I looked at myself in the mirror from the sixpence-ha'penny bazaar. Isaw a small, pink, heart-shaped face with large brown eyes, eyes setwide apart and full of impatience and eagerness for life. I saw aquantity of bright chestnut hair, done rather "anyhow." I saw a long,slender, white throat--just the throat of Lady Anastasia--sloping downinto shoulders that are really rather shapely. Only how can anything onearth look shapely under the sort of blouse that Aunt Anastasia gets forme? Or the sort of serge skirt? Or the shoes?
I glanced down at those four-and-elevenpenny canvas abominations thatwere still sopping from the gardening hose, and I said with fervour: "IfI had money, I'd have three pairs of new shoes for every day in theweek. And each pair should cost as much as all my clothes have cost thisyear!"
"Fancy that, now. That's not the kind of thing as I'd care for myself.Extravagant--that's a thing I couldn't be," declared Million, in hercheerful, matter-of-fact little voice, sweeping up the hearth as shespoke. "Legacies and rolling in money--and a maid to myself, and bein'called 'Miss Million,' and all that. That 'ud never be my wish!"
"What was your wish, then?" I asked, beginning to tear up the crispleaves of the lettuce into the glass salad-bowl. "I've told you mine,Million. Tell me yours."
"Sure, you won't let on to any one if I do?" returned our little maid,putting her black, white-capped head on one side like a little bird."Sure you won't go and make game of me afterwards to your AuntNasturtium--oh, lor'. Hark at me, now!--to Miss Lovelace, I mean? Ifthere's one thing that does make me feel queer it's thinking folks aremaking game of me."
"I promise I won't. Tell me the wish!"
Million laughed again, coloured, twiddled her apron. Then, leaning overthe deal table towards me, she murmured unexpectedly and bashfully: "Ialways wish that I could marry a gentleman!"
"A gentleman?" I echoed, rather taken aback.
"Of course, I know," explained Million, "that a young girl in my walk oflife has plenty of chances of getting married. Not like a young lady inyours, Miss. Without a young lady like you has plenty of money there's avery poor choice of husbands!"
"There is, indeed," I sighed.
The little maid went on: "So I could have some sort of young man anyday, Miss Beatrice. There's the postman here--very inclined to befriendly--not to mention the policeman. And the young man who used tocome round to attend to the gas at the Orphanage when I was there. Hewrites to me still."
"And do you write back to him?"
"Picture postcards of Richmond Park. That's all he's ever had from me.He's not the sort of young man I'd like. You see, Miss, I've seen othersorts," said Million. "Where I was before I came here there was threesons of the house, and seein' so much of them gave me a sort ofcri--terion, like. One was in the Navy. Oh, Miss, he was nice. Oh, theway he talked. It was better than 'The Flag Lieutenant.' It's a fact,I'd rather listen to his voice than any one's on the stage, d'you know.
"The two others were at Oxford College. And oh, their lovely ties, andthe jolly, laughing sort of ways they had, and how they used to open thedoor for their mother, and to sing in the bathroom of a morning. Well! Idunno what it was, quite. Different," said little Million vaguely, withher wistfully ambitious grey eyes straying out of the kitchen windowagain. "I did like it. And that's the sort of gentleman I'd like tomarry."
She turned to the oven again, and moved the gooseberry tart to the highshelf.
I said, smiling at her: "Million, any 'gentleman' ought to be glad tomarry you for your pastry alone."
"Oh, lor', Miss, I'm not building on it," said Million brightly. "Asergeant's daughter? A girl in service? Why, what toff would ever thinkof her? 'Tisn't as if I was on the stage, where it doesn't seem tomatter what you've been. Or as if I was 'a lovely mill-hand,' like inthose tales where they always marry the son of the owner of the works.So what's the good of me thinking? Not but what I make up dreams in myhead, sometimes," admitted Million, "of what I'd do and say--if 'He' didand said!"
"All girls have those dreams, Million," I told her, "whether they'remaids or mistresses."
"Think so, Miss Beatrice?" said our little maid. "Well, I suppose I'm aslikely to get my wish of marrying a gentleman as you are of coming infor a fortune. Talking of gentlemen, have you noticed the tall, fair onewho's come to live at No. 44? Him that plays the pianoler of an evening?In a City office he is, their girl told me. Wanted to get into the Army,but there wasn't enough money. Well, he's one of the sort I'd a-liked. Areal gentleman, I call him."
And Auntie calls him an insufferable young bounder!
Funny, funny world where people give suc
h different names to the samething!
I can see it's going to take Aunt Anastasia a week before she forgivesme the incident of the young man next door!
Supper this evening was deathly silent; except for the scrunching overmy salad, just like footsteps on the gravel. After supper we satspeechless in the drawing-room. I darned my holey tan cashmerestockings.
Auntie read her last book from the library, "Rambles in Japan." She'salways reading books of travel--"Our Trip to Turkey," "A Cycle inCathay," "Round the World in a Motor-boat," and so on. Poor dear! Shewould so adore travelling! And she'll never get the chance except inprint. Once I begged her to sell the Gainsborough portrait of LadyAnastasia, and take out the money in having a few really ripping tours.I thought she would have withered me with her look.
She'll never do anything so desperately disrespectful to our family.She'll never do anything, in fact. Nothing will ever happen. Life willjust go on and on, and we shall go on too, getting older, and shabbier,and more "select," and duller. They say that fortune knocks once in alifetime at every one's door. But I'm sure there'll never be a knock atthe door of No. 45 Laburnum Grove, except----
"Tot--Tot!"
Ah! the postman. Then Million's quick step into the hall. Then nothingfurther. No letters for us? The letter must have been for our littlemaid. Perhaps from the young man who attended to the Orphanage gas?Happy Million, to have even an unwanted young man to write to her!