Read Ebook: Mr. Wycherly's Wards by Harker L Allen Lizzie Allen

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Ebook has 1872 lines and 69976 words, and 38 pages

"No," said Mr. Wycherly, rising hastily. "You might, if you would be so good, find the boxes that contain blankets and sheets and begin unpacking them. I'll go to that office at once."

He hurried away, walking fast through the sunny streets, so strange and yet so familiar, till he came to the window with the wire blind that Edmund had indicated. Here he paused, fixed his eyeglasses firmly on his nose and read the cards exhibited. Alas! they nearly all referred to the needs of the servantless, and only two emanated from handmaidens desirous of obtaining situations. Of these, one was a nursemaid, and the other "as tweeny," a species unknown to Mr. Wycherly, and as her age was only fourteen he did not allow his mind to dwell upon her possibilities.

He opened the door and an automatic bell rang loudly. He shut the door, when it rang again, greatly to his distress. He seemed to be making so much noise.

The apartment was sparsely furnished with a largish table covered with rather tired-looking ledgers; two cane chairs stood in front of the table, while behind it was a larger leather-covered chair on which was seated a stout, formidable woman, who glared rather than looked at Mr. Wycherly as he approached.

She really was of great bulk, with several chins and what dressmakers would call "a fine bust." Her garments were apparently extremely tight, for her every movement was attended by an ominous creaking. Her hair was frizzed in front right down to her light eyebrows; at the back it was braided in tight plaits. She regarded Mr. Wycherly with small, hostile eyes.

He had removed his hat on entrance, and stood before her with dignified white head bowed in deference towards her, courteously murmuring, "Good morning."

"How many servants kep'?" she demanded with a fire and suddenness that startled Mr. Wycherly.

"I had thought of trying to do with one."

"'Ow many in fambly?" and this alarming woman opened one of the books in front of her and seized a pen. There was in her tone such a dreadful suggestion of, "Anything you may say will be used against you," that when she dipped her pen into the ink Mr. Wycherly positively trembled; and grasped the back of one of the cane chairs as a support.

"Male or female?"

"Really," Mr. Wycherly remonstrated, "what has that got to do with it? As a matter of fact my wards are boys."

All this time she had been making entries in the ledger; now she looked up to fire off, abruptly as before:

"The booking fee is one-and-six."

Mr. Wycherly took a handful of silver out of his pocket and abstracted this sum and laid it upon the desk. She of the ledger ignored the offering and continued her cross-examination:

"What wages?"

Mr. Wycherly mentally invoked a blessing upon Lady Alicia's practical head as he replied quite glibly, "From twenty to twenty-five pounds, but she must be trustworthy and capable."

"What outings?"

Here was a poser! But the fighting spirit had been roused in Mr. Wycherly. He would not be browbeaten by this stout, ungracious person who took his eighteenpence, and so far had done nothing but ask questions, affording him no information whatsoever.

"That," he retorted with dignity, "can be arranged later on."

"Your name and address?" was the next query, and when he furnished this information, carefully spelling his name, it pained him inexpressibly to note that she wrote it down as "Witcherby," at the same time remarking in a rumbling tone indicative of displeasure, "Very old 'ouses, most inconvenient, most trying stairs.... 'Ow soon do you want a general?"

"A what?" asked Mr. Wycherly, this time thoroughly mystified.

"A general, that's what she is if there's no more kep'. You won't get no cook-'ousekeeper unless she's to 'ave 'er meals along with you, and a little girl to do the rough work."

"She can't possibly have her meals with me," cried Mr. Wycherly, crimson at the very thought. "It would be most unpleasant--for both of us."

"Then as I said it's a general you wants."

"And have you upon your books any staid and respectable young woman--preferably an orphan--" Mr. Wycherly interpolated, remembering Montagu's suggestion, "who could come to us at once?"

"Not, so to speak, to-day, I 'aven't; but they often comes in of a Monday, and I'll let you know. I could send 'er along; it isn't far."

The ledger was shut with a bang as an intimation that the interview was at an end, and Mr. Wycherly fared forth into the street with heated brow and a sense that, in spite of his heroism in braving so dreadful a person, he was not much further on his quest. "Monday, she said," he kept repeating to himself, "and to-day is only Thursday."

When he got back to Holywell, the boys were standing at the front door on the lookout for him. They rushed towards him exclaiming in delighted chorus: "We've got a woman. We thought we'd ask at the King's Arms, and they told us of one."

"What? A servant?" asked Mr. Wycherly with incredulous joy.

"No, no, a day-body. The boots knew about her; she lives down Hell Lane, just about opposite."

"Edmund!" Mr. Wycherly remonstrated. "However did you get hold of that name?"

"No," said Mr. Wycherly, "not yet. Boys, it's a most bewildering search. Can either of you tell me since when maid-servants have taken to call themselves after officers in the army? The rather alarming person in charge of that office informs me that what we require is a 'general.' Do you suppose that if we should need a younger maid to help her we must ask for a 'sub-lieutenant'?"

"Perhaps they are called generals when they're old," said Montagu thoughtfully; "at that rate we ought to call Mrs. Griffin a field-marshal. She's pretty old, I can tell you, but she's most agreeable."

"Probably," said Mr. Wycherly, "in time to come they will get tired of the army and take to the nomenclature of the Universities. Then we shall have provosts and deans and wardens. But I'm glad that you have been more successful than I have. I've no doubt we can manage with Mrs. Griffin until we get a maid of our own."

"I think it was mean of that body with the mother," said Edmund; "she didn't even say she'd come as soon as she could. But I think the Griffin will be fun, and if she can't do it all we'll get the Mock-Turtle to help her."

"Was it very high-class, that registry?" he continued; "it didn't look at all grand outside."

"I cannot judge of its class, I have never been to such a place before and I earnestly hope I may never be called upon to go there again, for it is a species of inquisition, and they write your answers down in a book. A horrid experience." And Mr. Wycherly shuddered.

Mr. Wycherly surveyed the scene with kind, pleased eyes; nor did he realise then that what made it all seem so endearing and familiar was the fact that on the horse-hair sofa there sprawled--"sat" is far too decorous a word--a lively boy of ten, with rumpled, curly, yellow hair and a rosy handsome face from which frank blue eyes looked forth upon a world that, so far, contained little that he did not consider in the light of an adventure.

While balanced on the edge of the table--again "sat" is quite undescriptive--another boy swung his long legs while his hands were plunged deep in his trouser pockets. A tall, thin boy this, with grave dark eyes, long-lashed and gentle, and a scholar's forehead.

Montagu, nearly fourteen, had just reached the age when clothes seem always rather small, sleeves short, likewise trousers: when wrists are red and obtrusive and hair at the crown of the head stands straight on end.

Neither of the boys ever sat still except when reading. Then Montagu, at all events, was lost to the world. They frequently talked loudly and at the same time, and were noisy, gay and restless as is the usual habit of their healthy kind.

Strange companions truly for a scholarly recluse! Yet the boys were absolutely at ease with and fearless of their guardian.

With him they were even more artlessly natural than with schoolfellows of their own age. Their affection for him was literally a part of their characters, and, in Montagu's case, passionately protective. The elder boy had already realised how singularly unfitted Mr. Wycherly was, both by temperament and habit, to grapple with practical difficulties.

"Ah'm awfu' hungry," said Edmund presently, in broadest Doric.

"Edmund," remarked his guardian, "I have noticed on several occasions since you returned from school that you persist in talking exactly like the peasantry at Burnhead. Why?"

"But you never did it in Scotland," Mr. Wycherly expostulated.

"I don't like it, Edmund, and I wonder your masters have not found fault with you."

"Indeed I wish to hear nothing of the kind," said Mr. Wycherly in dignified reproof. "I can't think why you should copy the lower classes in your mode of speech."

"Your name is quite enough to make them sure of that," Mr. Wycherly argued, "and you may take it from me that Scottish gentlemen don't talk in the least like Sandie Croall."

At that particular moment Edmund was busily engaged in doing a handspring on the end of the sofa, so he forebore to reply. The fact was, that like the immortal "Christina McNab" Edmund had, early in his career at school, decided that to be merely "Scotch" was ordinary and uninteresting, but to be "d--d Scotch" was both distinguished and amusing, and he speedily attained to popularity and even a certain eminence among his schoolfellows when he persisted in answering every question with a broadness of vowel and welter of "r's" characteristic of those whom Mr. Wycherly called "the peasantry of Burnhead." Moreover, he used many homely and expressive adjectives that were seized upon by his companions as a new and sonorous form of slang. Altogether Edmund was a social success in the school world. His report was not quite equally enthusiastic, but, as he philosophically remarked to Montagu, "It would be monotonous for Guardie if we both had good reports, and your's makes you out to be a fearful smug."

Whereupon Montagu suitably chastised his younger brother with a slipper, and the subject was held over to the next debate.

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