I Saw Three Ships | Page 7

the
town-place, stopping on her way to look in at the kitchen window.
"Mary Jane, if you call that a roast goose, I cull it a burning shame!"
Mary Jane, peeling potatoes with her back to the window, and tossing
them one by one into a bucket of water, gave a jump, and cut her finger,
dropping forthwith a half-peeled magnum bonum, which struck the
bucket's edge and slid away across the slate flooring under the table.
"Awgh--awgh!" she burst out, catching up her apron and clutching it
round the cut. "Look what you've done, Miss Ruby! an' me miles away,
thinkin' o' shipwrecks an' dead swollen men."
"Look at the Chris'mas dinner, you mazed creature!"

In truth, the goose was fast spoiling. The roasting apparatus in this
kitchen was a simple matter, consisting of a nail driven into the centre
of the 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