Nancy | Page 4

of
closing them. The fact is, that amateur cooking, though a graceful
accomplishment, has its penalties, and that at the present moment the
smell of broiled bones and fried potatoes that fills our place of learning
is something appalling. Why may not it penetrate beneath the
swing-door, through the passages, and reach the drawing-room? Such a
thing has happened once or twice before. At the bare thought we all
quake. I am in the pleasant situation, just at present, of owning a chilled
body and a blazing face.
Chiefest among the cooks have I been, and now I am sitting trying to
fan my red cheeks and redder nose, with the back of an old atlas, gutted
in some ancient broil, trying, in deference to Sir Roger, to cool down
my appearance a little against prayer-time. Alas! that epoch is nearer
than I think. Ting! tang! the loud bell is ringing through the house. My
hair is loosened and tumbled with stooping over the fire, and I have
burnt a hole right in the fore front of my gown, by letting a hot cinder
fall from the grate upon it. There is, however, now no time to repair
these dilapidations. We issue from our lair, and en route meet the long
string of servants filing from their distant regions. How is it that the
cook's face is so much, much less red than mine? Prayers are held in the
justicing-room, and thither we are all repairing. The accustomed scene
bursts on my eye. At one end the long, straight row of the servants,

immovably devout, staring at the wall, with their backs to us. In the
middle of the room, facing them, father, kneeling upon a chair with his
hands clutched, and his eyes closed, repeating the church prayers, as if
he were rather angry with them than otherwise. Mother, kneeling on the
carpet beside him, like the faithful, ruffed, and farthingaled wife on a
fifteenth-century tomb. Behind them, again, at some little distance, we
and our visitor. With the best will in the world to do so, I can get but a
meagre view of the latter. The room is altogether rather dark, it being
one of our manners and customs not to throw much light on prayers,
and he has chosen the darkest corner of it. I only vaguely see the
outline of a kneeling figure, evidently neither bulky nor obese, of a flat
back and vigorous shoulders. His face is generally hidden in his hands,
but once or twice he lifts it to scan the proportions of my late
grandfather's preposterously fat cob, whose portrait hangs on the wall
above his head.
There is no doubt that on some days the devil reigns with a more potent
sway over people than on others. Tonight he has certainly entered into
the boys. He often does a little, but this evening he is holding a great
and mighty carnival among them. While father's strong, hard voice
vibrates in a loud, dull monotone through the silent room, they are
engaged in a hundred dumb yet ungodly antics behind his back.
Algernon has thrust his head far out between the rungs of his
chair-back, and affects to be unable to withdraw it again, making
movements of simulated suffocation. The Brat is stealthily walking on
his knees across the space that intervenes between them to Barbara,
with intent, as I too well know, of unseemly pinchings. If father
unbutton his eyes, or move his head one barley-corn, we are all dead
men. I hold my breath in a nervous agony. Thank Heaven! the harsh
recitation still flows on with equable loud slowness. In happy ignorance
of his offspring's antics, father is still asking, or rather ordering, the
Almighty (for there is more of command than entreaty in his tone) to
prosper the High Court of Parliament. Also the Brat is now returning to
his place, travelling with surprising noiseless rapidity over the Turkey
carpet, dragging his shins and his feet after him. I draw a long breath of
relief, and drop my hot face into my spread hands. My peace, however,

is not of long duration. I am aroused again by a sort of choking snort
from Tou Tou, who is beside me--a snort that seems compounded of
mingled laughter and pain, and, looking up, detect Bobby in the act of
deftly puncturing one of her long bare legs with a long brass pin, which
he has found straying, after the vagabond manner of pins, over the
carpet.
I raise myself, and lean over Tou Tou, to give the offender a silent
buffet of admonition, and, lifting my eyes apprehensively to see if I am
noticed, I meet the blear eyes of Sir Roger fixed upon mine. He has
turned his face quite toward