The Three Miss Kings. Ada Cambridge

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СКАЧАТЬ down that passage, and this is your bell, and those drawers have got keys, you see, and lunch will be ready in half-an-hour. The dining-room is the first door at the bottom of the stairs, and – phew! that tobacco smoke hangs about the place still, in spite of all my cleaning and airing. I never allow smoking in the house, Miss King – not in the general way; but a man who has to be up o' nights writing for the newspapers, and never getting his proper sleep, it's hard to grudge him the comfort of his pipe – now isn't it? And I have had no ladies here to be annoyed by it – in general I don't take ladies, for gentlemen are so much the most comfortable to do for; and Mr. Brion is so considerate, and gives so little trouble – "

      "What! Is Mr. Paul Brion lodging here?" broke in Patty impetuously, with her face aflame.

      "Not now," Mrs. M'Intyre replied. "He left me last week. These rooms that you have got were his – he has had them for over three years. He wanted you to come here, because he thought you would be comfortable with me" – smiling benignly. "He said a man could put up anywhere."

      She left them, presently; and as soon as the girls found themselves alone, they hurriedly assured each other that nothing should induce them to submit to this. It was not to be thought of for a moment. Paul Brion must be made to remove the mountainous obligation that he had put them under, and return to his rooms instantly. They would not put so much as a pocket handkerchief in the drawers and cupboards until this point had been settled with him.

      At four o'clock, when they had visited the bathroom, arranged their pretty hair afresh, and put on the black print gowns – when they had had a quiet lunch with Mrs. M'Intyre (whose other boarders being gentlemen in business, did not appear at the mid-day meal), prattling cheerfully with the landlady the while, and thinking that the cold beef and salads of Melbourne were the most delicious viands ever tasted – when they had examined their rooms minutely, and tried the sofas and easy-chairs, and stood for a long while on the balcony looking at the other houses in the quiet street – at four o'clock Paul Brion came; and the maid brought up his card, while he gossiped with Mrs. M'Intyre in the hall. He had no sooner entered the girls' sitting-room than Elizabeth hastened to unburden herself. Patty was burning to be the spokeswoman for the occasion, but she knew her place, and she remembered the small effect she had produced on him in the morning, and proudly held aloof. In her sweet and graceful way, but with as much gravity and earnestness as if it were a matter of life and death, Elizabeth explained her view of the situation. "Of course we cannot consent to such an arrangement," she said gently; "you must have known we could never consent to allow you to turn out of your own rooms to accommodate us. You must please come back again, Mr. Brion, and let us go elsewhere. There seem to be plenty of other lodgings to be had – even in this street."

      Paul Brion's face wore a pleasant smile as he listened. "Oh, thank you," he replied lightly. "But I am very comfortable where I am – quite as much so as I was here – rather more, indeed. For the people at No. 6 have set up a piano on the other side of that wall" – pointing to the cedar chiffonnier – "and it bothered me dreadfully when I wanted to write. It was the piano drove me out – not you. Perhaps it will drive you out too. It is a horrible nuisance, for it is always out of tune; and you know the sort of playing that people indulge in who use pianos that are out of tune."

      So their little demonstration collapsed. Paul had gone away to please himself. "And has left us to endure the agonies of a piano out of tune," commented Patty.

      As the day wore on, reaction from the mood of excitement and exaltation with which it began set in. Their spirits flagged. They felt tired and desolate in this new world. The unaccustomed hot dinner in the evening, at which they sat for nearly an hour in company with strange men who asked them questions, and pressed them to eat what they didn't want, was very uncongenial to them. And when, as soon as they could, they escaped to their own quarters, their little sitting-room, lighted with gas and full of hot upstairs air, struck them with its unsympathetic and unhomelike aspect. The next door piano was jingling its music-hall ditties faintly on the other side of the wall, and poor Dan, who had been banished to the back yard, was yelping so piteously that their hearts bled to hear him. "We must get a house of our own at once, Elizabeth – at once," exclaimed Eleanor – "if only for Dan's sake."

      "We will never have pets again – never!" said Patty, with something like an incipient sob in her voice, as she paced restlessly about the room. "Then we shall not have to ill-treat them and to part from them." She was thinking of her little bear, and the opossum, and the magpies, who were worse off than Dan.

      And Elizabeth sat down at the table, and took out pencil and note-book with a careworn face. She was going to keep accounts strictly, as Mr. Brion had advised her, and they not only meant to live within their income, as a matter of course, but to save a large part of it for future European contingencies. And, totting up the items of their expenditure for three days – cost of passage by steamer, cost of provisions on board, cab fare, and the sum paid for a week's board and lodging in advance – she found that they had been living for that period at the rate of about a thousand a year.

      So that, upon the whole, they were not quite so happy as they had expected to be, when they went to bed.

      CHAPTER VII.

      A MORNING WALK

      But they slept well in their strange beds, and by morning all their little troubles had disappeared. It was impossible not to suppose that the pets "at home" were making themselves happy, seeing how the sun shone and the sea breezes blew; and Dan, who had reached years of discretion, was evidently disposed to submit himself to circumstances. Having a good view of the back yard, they could see him lolling luxuriously on the warm asphalte, as if he had been accustomed to be chained up, and liked it. Concerning their most pressing anxiety – the rapid manner in which money seemed to melt away, leaving so little to show for it – it was pointed out that at least half the sum expended was for a special purpose, and chargeable to the reserve fund and not to their regular income, from which at present only five pounds had been taken, which was to provide all their living for a week to come.

      So they went downstairs in serene and hopeful spirits, and gladdened the eyes of the gentlemen boarders who were standing about the dining-room, devouring the morning's papers while they waited for breakfast. There were three of them, and each placed a chair promptly, and each offered handsomely to resign his newspaper. Elizabeth took an Argus to see what advertisements there were of houses to let; and then Mrs. M'Intyre came in with her coffee-pot and her cheerful face, and they sat down to breakfast. Mrs. M'Intyre was that rare exception to the rule, a boarding-house keeper who had private means as well as the liberal disposition of which the poorest have their share, and so her breakfast was a good breakfast. And the presence of strangers at table was not so unpleasant to our girls on this occasion as the last.

      After breakfast they had a solemn consultation, the result being that the forenoon was dedicated to the important business of buying their clothes and finding their way to and from the shops.

      "For we must have bonnets," said Patty, "and that immediately. Bonnets, I perceive, are the essential tokens of respectability. And we must never ride in a cab again."

      They set off at ten o'clock, escorted by Mrs. M'Intyre, who chanced to be going to the city to do some marketing. The landlady, being a very fat woman, to whom time was precious, took the omnibus, according to custom; but her companions with one consent refused to squander unnecessary threepences by accompanying her in that vehicle. They had a straight road before them all the way from the corner of Myrtle Street to the Fishmarket, where she had business; and there they joined her when she had completed her purchases, and she gave them a fair start at the foot of Collins Street before she left them.

      In Collins Street they spent the morning – a bewildering, exciting, anxious morning – going from shop to shop, and everywhere finding that the sum they had brought to spend was utterly inadequate for the purpose to which they had dedicated it. They saw any quantity СКАЧАТЬ