Flaming June | Page 3

which the
tradesmen made their way to the back-doors of these secluded
dwellings.
Perhaps the most unpromisingly decorous house in the Park was
christened "The Nook," with that appalling lack of humour which is
nowhere portrayed more strikingly than in the naming of suburban
residences. It stood fair and square in the middle of the crescent; and
from garret to cellar there was not a nooky corner on which the eye
could light. Two drawing-room windows flanked the front door on the
left; two dining-room windows on the right. There was not even a gable
or a dormer to break the square solidity of the whole. Fourteen
windows in all, each chastely shrouded in Nottingham lace curtains,
looped back by yellow silk bands, fastened, to a fraction of an inch, at

the same height from the sill, while Aspidistra plants, mounted on
small tables, were artfully placed so as to fill up the space necessarily
left in the centre. They were handsome plants of venerable age, which
Mason, the parlourmaid, watered twice a week, sponging their leaves
with milk before she replaced them in their pots.
It was a typical early Victorian residence, inhabited by a spinster lady
of early Victorian type and her four henchwomen--Heap the cook,
Mary the housemaid, Mason the parlourmaid, and Jane the tweeny.
Four women, plus a boot-boy, to wait upon the wants of one solitary
person, yet in conclave with the domestic at The Croft to the right, and
The Holt to the left, Miss Briskett's maids were wont to assert that they
were worked off their feet. It was, as has been said, an early Victorian
household, conducted on early Victorian lines. Other people might be
content to buy half their supplies ready-made from the stores, but Miss
Briskett insisted on home-made bread, home-made jams and cakes;
home- made pickles and sauces; home-cured tongues and hams, and
home-made liqueurs. Cook kept the tweeny busy in the kitchen, while
Mary grumbled at having to keep half a dozen unused bedrooms in
spick and span perfection, and Mason spent her existence in polishing,
and sweeping invisible grains of dust from out-of-the-way-corners.
As a rule the domestic wheel turned on oiled wheels and Miss Briskett's
existence flowed on its even course, from one year's end to another,
with little but the weather to differentiate one month from another, but
on the day on which this history begins, a thunderbolt had fallen in the
shape of a letter bearing a New York post-mark, which the postman
handed in at the door of The Nook at the three o'clock delivery. Miss
Briskett read its contents, and gasped; read them again, and trembled;
read them a third time, and sat buried in thought for ten minutes by the
clock, at the expiration of which time she opened her own desk, and
penned a note to her friend and confidant, Mrs Ramsden, of The Holt--
"My dear Friend,--I have just received a communication from America
which is causing me considerable perturbation. If your engagements
will allow, I should be grateful if you will take tea with me this
afternoon, and give me the benefit of your wise counsel. Pray send a

verbal answer by bearer.--Yours sincerely,--
"Sophia A Briskett."
The trim Mason took the note to its destination, and waited in the hall
while Mrs Ramsden wrote her reply. The reference to a verbal answer
was only a matter of form. Miss Briskett would have been surprised
and affronted to receive so unceremonious a reply to her invitation--
"My dear Friend,--It will give me pleasure to take tea with you this
afternoon, as you so kindly suggest. I trust that the anxiety under which
you are labouring may be of a temporary nature, and shall be thankful
indeed if I can in any way assist to bring about its solution.--Most truly
yours,--
"Ellen Bean Ramsden."
"The best china, Mason, and a teapot for two!" was Miss Briskett's
order on receipt of this cordial response, and an hour later the two
ladies sat in conclave over a daintily-spread table in the drawing-room
of The Nook.
Miss Briskett was a tall, thin woman of fifty-eight or sixty, wearing a
white cap perched upon her grey hair, and an expression of frosty
propriety on her thin, pointed features. Frosty is the adjective which
most accurately describes her appearance. One felt a moral conviction
that she would suffer from chilblains in winter, that the long, thin
fingers must be cold to the touch, even on this bright May day; that the
tip of her nose was colder still, that she could not go to sleep at night
without a hot bottle to her feet. She was addicted to grey dresses,
composed of stiff and shiny silk, and to grey bonnets glittering with
steely beads. She creaked,