The Red House. Эдит Несбит

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СКАЧАТЬ some on your head,” said she.

      The green-grocer had promised to come at nine o'clock. That was why we had got up in the middle of the night, and finished our packing before eight o'clock. It was now past ten.

      “He has thought better of it,” said I. “He is a far-seeing man, and a kindly. He knows it cannot be for our real good to leave our Bandbox. Let's set to work and put all the things back in their places!”

      “Here he is,” said Chloe, jumping off the packing-case at the squeaking sound which ever preludes any weak effort on the part of the Bandbox door-knocker. “Oh, Len,” she whispered, in awestruck tones, “it isn't the men! I can see through the door-glass, and it's a lady, and look at me!”

      “Life hardly offers a dearer pleasure!” said I, and indeed, in her white gown and blue pinafore, with her brown hair loose and ruffled, she made so pretty a picture that I could not help thinking how a really high-toned green-grocer might well have refused base coin as the price of “moving” us, counting himself well paid by the sight of her.

      “I'll go, if you like,” I said, and went. Chloe hid herself behind the kitchen door, where the jack-towel used to hang. Even its roller had been unscrewed and packed now.

      “Chloe!” I called, “it's all right. It's only Yolande.”

      “Only, indeed!” Miss Riseborough echoed. “Oh, here you are! What on earth's all this? A spring cleaning?”

      “Yolande?” Chloe cried. “But I thought you were in Italy!”

      “So I am. At least I was last week, and shall be again next. I've just run over for a few days on business, and I slipped away to the Bandbox to rest my eyes with a look at the turtle-doves. But they don't look restful at all.”

      She was taking the long, pearl-headed pins out of her hat as she spoke.

      “Oh!” said my wife, again. “Sit down—no—not on that—it's crocks and newspapers—and the chairs are all packed. Try the packing-case.”

      But murmuring, “The divan for me!” Yolande sank down on a roll of bedding.

      “I've yards to tell you, only I thought you were in that horrid Italy, and I've been too busy to write. We're moving into a house with twenty-nine rooms in it.”

      Then the whole story came out—of Chloe's folly and of my madness. Yolande listened intently, her bright, gray eyes taking in Chloe's transports, and my all too moderate enthusiasm, as well as the devastated state of the Bandbox.

      “You poor, dear things,” she said. “I wish I wasn't going back to Italy to-morrow. I should like to lend a hand.”

      “I know you would,” said I, with intent.

      “Oh yes, but you can't wound me with your sneers. I own I love to have a finger in my neighbors' pies, and the more I love my neighbor, the more I long to infest her house on baking-days. But look here, I wish you'd do me a good turn. If your house is that awful size, you will certainly have a couple of spare rooms in it.”

      “More like five-and-twenty,” I said.

      “Well, I've let my flat, unfurnished. Could you, would you, can you, will you be angels enough to take in my poor, homeless furniture, and give it board and lodging and the comforts of a home for a month or two?”

      Of course we would, gladly, and we said so. And then we talked—always of the Red House.

      “You'll have a good deal of fun for your money in your new house,” Yolande said, at last, “but, oh, you make me feel as if you were the Babes in the Wood and I were the wicked uncle. I do wish I could stay and help you, but I've three pupils waiting in Florence with their mouths wide open, and a mere temporary chaperon guarding them, and I must scurry back to fill those gaping beaks with fat plums of learning. It's a dreadful trade, a crammer's—almost as bad as the samphire-gatherers'.”

      “Wish the pie luck, anyhow,” said I, drawing the cork of the ginger-ale, “though you can't have your fingers in it this time. But I dare say there'll be a bit of cold pie left for you when you come back.” So we stood up solemnly and raised our glasses to my toast,

      “Here's luck to the Red House!”

      Then said Yolande,

      “And to the Babes in the Wood!”

      And to Chloe's toast, “Here's to the wicked uncle—I mean the fairy godmother,” we emptied the glasses.

      Then Yolande said good-bye, and pinned her hat on to her bright hair. At the door she turned to say:

      “By-the-way, you won't mind my asking you to keep my things aired, will you? The furniture-warehouse people always let them get mothy, and give the piano a cold in its head. You might hang up the pictures, if you don't mind the trouble; they've all got cords, and they keep better hung up, like meat or game, you know. And furniture keeps best when it's being used. You'll sit on my chairs now and then, for the sake of the absent, won't you? My settle would go awfully well with your gate-table, and my oak press would do in those ‘marble halls’ you were talking about. I must rush, or miss my train. Good-bye. I'll send the furniture down to-morrow.”

      And she was gone.

      Chloe turned to me with wide-open, sparkling eyes.

      “Oh, Len, isn't she a darling? Just because she saw how our Bandboxful of furniture would rattle about in that big house like a peanut in a cocoanut shell, to lend us all hers! She is a darling.”

      “She is,” I admitted, “and her hair is the real Venetian red. But you'll miss the furniture horribly when she takes it away.”

      “Don't grumble,” said Chloe. “We shall have all her lovely things for months and months, and by the time she comes back we shall have made some money to buy things. I'm going to work like a nigger directly we get settled. And so must you. Oh, here are the men at last. Two hours late!”

      “Perhaps it is as well,” I said. “Harriet is only just ready.”

      Our fat-faced maid-servant, who had rigidly refused during the whole morning to assist us in the least, on the ground that she “had her packing to see to,” now descended the stairs, bearing her whole wardrobe in two brown-paper parcels and a tin hat-box.

      “Come in, please,” said Chloe, to our remover. “You'd better take these oak boxes first. They're very heavy.”

      “I wants chesties of drawerses,” said the man, hoarsely, “all the chesties of drawerses you've got, and the pianner. Come on, Bill.”

      “Right you are, Charley,” was the response.

      “We haven't a piano, here,” said Chloe, and Charley seemed at once to form the lowest opinion of us. He was a thick-set ruffian with a red and angry eye. He was one of the four helpers engaged by the green-grocer to “move” us. His clothes and those of his friends smelled strange and stuffy, as though they had been smeared with putty and mutton fat, and locked away for years in a cupboard full of pickled onions and yellow soap and mice. The clothes of the unskilled laborer always have this strange scent. It lingers about everything they touch in passing through a house, and after days its freshness is still unimpaired. But I never knew any scent СКАЧАТЬ