Merely Mary Ann | Page 2

your mistress--or is it your mother?"
Mary Ann shook her head but did not speak.
"Oh: you are not Miss Leadbatter?"
"No; Mary Ann."
She spoke humbly; her eyes were shy and would not meet his. He winced as he heard the name, though her voice was not unmusical.
"Ah, Mary Ann! and I've been calling you Jane all along. Mary Ann what?"
She seemed confused and flushed a little.
"Mary Ann!" she murmured.
"Merely Mary Ann?"
"Yessir."
He smiled. "Seems a sort of white Topsy," he was thinking.
She stood still, holding in her hand the tablecloth she had just folded. Her eyes were downcast, and the glint of sunshine had leapt upon the long lashes.
"Well, Mary Ann, tell your mistress there is a piano coming. It will stand over there--you'll have to move the sideboard somewhere else."
"A piano!" Mary Ann opened her eyes, and Lancelot saw that they were large and pathetic. He could not see the colour for the glint of sunshine that touched them with false fire.
"Yes; I suppose it will have to come up through the window, these staircases are so beastly narrow. Do you never have a stout person in the house, I wonder?"
"Oh yes, sir. We had a lodger here last year as was quite a fat man."
"And did he come up through the window by a pulley?"
He smiled at the image, and expected to see Mary Ann smile in response. He was disappointed when she did not; it was not only that her stolidity made his humour seem feeble--he half wanted to see how she looked when she smiled.
"Oh dear no," said Mary Ann; "he lived on the ground floor!"
"Oh!" murmured Lancelot, feeling the last sparkle taken from his humour. He was damped to the skin by Mary Ann's platitudinarian style of conversation. Despite its prettiness, her face was dulness incarnate.
"Anyhow, remember to take in the piano if I'm out," he said tartly. "I suppose you've seen a piano--you'll know it from a kangaroo?"
"Yessir," breathed Mary Ann.
"Oh, come, that's something. There is some civilisation in Baker's Terrace after all. But are you quite sure?" he went on, the teasing instinct getting the better of him. "Because, you know, you've never seen a kangaroo."
Mary Ann's face lit up a little. "Oh, yes I have, sir; it came to the village fair when I was a girl."
"Oh, indeed!" said Lancelot, a little staggered; "what did it come there for--to buy a new pouch?"
"No, sir; in a circus."
"Ah, in a circus. Then, perhaps, you can play the piano, too."
Mary Ann got very red. "No, sir; missus never showed me how to do that."
Lancelot surrendered himself to a roar of laughter. "This is a real original," he said to himself, just a touch of pity blending with his amusement.
"I suppose, though, you'd be willing to lend a hand occasionally?" he could not resist saying.
"Missus says I must do anything I'm asked," she said, in distress, the tears welling to her eyes. And a merciless bell mercifully sounding from an upper room, she hurried out.
How much Mary Ann did, Lancelot never rightly knew, any more than he knew the number of lodgers in the house, or who cooked his chops in the mysterious regions below stairs. Sometimes he trod on the toes of boots outside doors and vaguely connected them with human beings, peremptory and exacting as himself. To Mary Ann each of those pairs of boots was a personality, with individual hours of rising and retiring, breakfasting and supping, going out and coming in, and special idiosyncrasies of diet and disposition. The population of 5 Baker's Terrace was nine, mostly bell-ringers. Life was one ceaseless round of multifarious duties; with six hours of blessed unconsciousness, if sleep were punctual. All the week long Mary Ann was toiling up and down the stairs or sweeping them, making beds or puddings, polishing boots or fire-irons. Holidays were not in Mary Ann's calendar; and if Sunday ever found her on her knees, it was only when she was scrubbing out the kitchen. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy; it had not, apparently, made Mary Ann a bright girl.
The piano duly came in through the window like a burglar. It was a good instrument, but hired. Under Lancelot's fingers it sang like a bird and growled like a beast. When the piano was done growling Lancelot usually started. He paced up and down the room, swearing audibly. Then he would sit down at the table and cover ruled paper with hieroglyphics for hours together. His movements were erratic to the verge of mystery. He had no fixed hours for anything; to Mary Ann he was hopeless. At any given moment he might be playing on the piano, or writing on the curiously ruled paper, or stamping about the room, or sitting limp with despair in the one