I Saw Three Ships | Page 7

chimney-piece, a number of worsted threads depending therefrom, and a steel hook attached to these threads. Fix the joint or fowl firmly on the hook, give it a spin with the hand, and the worsted threads wound, unwound, and wound again, turning it before the blaze--an admirable jack, if only looked after. At present it hung motionless over the dripping-pan, and the goose wore a suit of motley, exhibiting a rich Vandyke brown to the fire, an unhealthy yellow to the window.
"There now!" Mary Jane rushed to the jack and gave it a spin, while Ruby walked round by the back door, and appeared dripping on the threshold. "I declare 'tis like Troy Town this morning: wrecks and rumours o' wrecks. Now 'tis 'Ropes! ropes!' an' nex' 'tis 'Where be the stable key, Mary Jane, my dear?' an' then agen, 'Will'ee be so good as to fetch master's second-best spy-glass, Mary Jane, an' look slippy?'--an' me wi' a goose to stuff, singe, an' roast, an' 'tatties to peel, an' greens to cleanse, an' apples to chop for sauce, an' the hoarders no nearer away than the granary loft, with a gatherin' 'pon your second toe an' the half o' 'em rotten when you get there. The pore I be in! Why, Miss Ruby, you'm streamin'-leakin'!"
"I'm wet through, Mary Jane; an' I don't care if I die." Ruby sank on the settle, and fairly broke down.
"Hush 'ee now, co!"
"I don't, I don't, an' I don't! I'm tired o' the world, an' my heart's broke. Mary Jane, you selfish thing, you've never asked about my banns, no more'n the rest; an' after that cast-off frock, too, that I gave you last week so good as new!"
"Was it very grand, Miss Ruby? Was it shuddery an' yet joyful-- lily-white an' yet rosy-red--hot an' yet cold--'don't lift me so high,' an' yet 'praise God, I'm exalted above women'?"
"'Twas all and yet none. 'Twas a voice speakin' my name, sweet an' terrible, an' I longed for it to go on an' on; and then came the Gauger stunnin' and shoutin' 'Wreck! wreck!' like a trumpet, an' the church was full o' wind, an' the folk ran this way an' that, like sheep, an' left me sittin' there. I'll--I'll die an old maid, I will, if only to s--spite such ma--ma--manners!"
"Aw, pore dear! But there's better tricks than dyin' unwed. Bind up my finger, Miss Ruby, an' listen. You shall play Don't Care, an' change your frock, an' we'll step down to th' cove after dinner an' there be heartless and fancy-free. Lord! when the dance strikes up, to see you carryin' off the other maids' danglers an' treating your own man like dirt!"
Ruby stood up, the water still running off her frock upon the slates, her moist eyes resting beyond the window on the midden-heap across the yard, as if she saw there the picture Mary Jane conjured up.
"No. I won't join their low frolic; an' you ought to be above it. I'll pull my curtains an' sit up-stairs all day, an' you shall read to me."
The other pulled a wry face. This was not her idea of enjoyment. She went back to the goose sad at heart, for Miss Ruby had a knack of enforcing her wishes.
Sure enough, soon after dinner was cleared away (a meal through which Ruby had sulked and Farmer Tresidder eaten heartily, talking with a full mouth about the rescue, and coarsely ignoring what he called his daughter's "faddles"), the two girls retired to the chamber up-stairs; where the mistress was as good as her word, and pulled the dimity curtains before settling herself down in an easy-chair to listen to extracts from a polite novel as rendered aloud, under dire compulsion, by Mary Jane.
The rain had ceased by this, and the wind abated, though it still howled around the angle of the house and whipped a spray of the monthly-rose bush on the quarrels of the window, filling the pauses during which Mary Jane wrestled with a hard word. Ruby herself had taught the girl this accomplishment--rare enough at the time--and Mary Jane handled it gingerly, beginning each sentence in a whisper, as if awed by her own intrepidity, and ending each in a kind of gratulatory cheer. The work was of that class of epistolary fiction then in vogue, and the extract singularly well fitted to Ruby's mood.
"My dearest Wil-hel-mina," began Mary Jane, "racked with a hun-dred conflicting em-otions, I resume the nar-rative of those fa-tal moments which rapt me from your affec-tion-ate em-brace. Suffer me to re--to re-cap--"
"Better spell it, Mary Jane."
"To r.e., re--c.a.p., cap, recap--i.t, it, re--capit--Lor'! what a twister!--u, recapitu--l.a.t.e, late, re-cap-it-u-late the events de-tailed in my last letter, full stop--there! if I han't read that full stop out loud! Lord Bel-field, though an ad-ept