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<h3>Chapter Six.</h3> <h4>Bridgie’s Pudding.</h4> It was two days before Christmas, and Bridgie O’Shaughnessy enveloped herself in a white apron, and pensively regarded the contents of the larder. In a couple of hours Sylvia was expected to arrive, and meanwhile Mary the cook had been seized with an irresistible craving to visit an invalid mother, and had taken herself off for the afternoon, leaving the arrangements for dinner in the care of the young mistress, and a still younger parlourmaid. Mary’s excuse for requesting leave of absence at so inconvenient a time was somewhat contradictory and involved. Her mother was failing fast, and as it was a custom in the family to die in December, it was a daughter’s duty to visit her as often as possible; the shops were all dressed-up for Christmas, and it was hard that a body should not get a bit of pleasure sometimes, and the steak was stewed, and could be “hotted up” at a moment’s notice. The invalid mother sat up for a couple of hours in the afternoon only, so Mary must get to the house by three o’clock at the latest, and would it matter if she were after eleven in returning, as Christmas came but once a year? Sweet Bridgie assented warmly to each proposition as it was put before her, urged a speedy departure, and was rather inclined to think it would be wise to stay at home for the night. She could never find it in her heart to deny a pleasure which it was in her power to grant, and was gaily confident of managing “somehow” to prepare a palatable meal for her guest, indeed, in the ardour of hospitality was rather pleased than otherwise to have a hand in the preparations. On the principle of “first catch your hare, then cook it,” she looked critically over the contents of the cupboards to find some ingredients which commended themselves to her limited knowledge of the culinary art. Gelatine had endless possibilities, but time was against her, and she had the dimmest notions as to the quantity required; pastry was always attainable, but on the one occasion when she had experimented in this direction, Jack had taken the nutcrackers to divide his tartlet amidst the cheers of an admiring audience, so that there was plainly no fame to be won in this direction. Milk puddings were too painfully ordinary, but a bag of macaroni seemed to offer at once an easy and a tasty alternative. Bridgie felt herself quite capable of boiling the sticks into tenderness, and scraping down cheese to add to the milky concoction, and a further search discovered a dark yellow lump stowed away in the corner of a cupboard evidently destined for such an end. It was wonderfully hard; Bridgie’s fingers ached with the strain of cutting it, and she shook her pretty head solemnly over the wastefulness of servants in not using up materials before their freshness was lost. She had intended to use the whole of the piece, but it took so long to prepare that she stopped half-way, and to judge by the mellow brownness of the pudding when she peeped at it in the oven, quality had more than made up for quantity. Sylvia sniffed delicately as she limped over the threshold, for the pudding had a strangely powerful smell, not exactly savoury perhaps, but distinctly fresh and wholesome. Bridgie bridled in proud consciousness of success the while she tucked up her guest on the drawing-room sofa. “I’ve been making a pudding for you, dear. Mind you enjoy it! Mary is out, so you are to excuse everything that goes wrong. There’s a pretty pink cushion to match your dress. I never saw that dress before! You are wonderfully smart, Miss Sylvia Trevor!” “It’s for the boys,” said Sylvia, laughing. “I want to make a good impression, for I am dreadfully afraid they mayn’t like me. I know nothing about young men. They never penetrate into Number Six, and Aunt Margaret thinks it is proper to ignore their existence between the ages of six and sixty. I thought if I put on the bright dress and my pet chiffon fichu, they might not notice how thin my hair is at the top!” “I’ll tell them not to notice,” said Bridgie gravely. She crossed the room and poked the fire with the best brass poker, a real, live coal fire and no wretched asbestos imitation, and knelt on the rug holding out her hands to the blaze and scorching her cheeks with undisturbed complacency. The room was mathematically the same in size and shape as the one across the road, but oh, how different in appearance! The one was a museum for the preservation of household gods, the other a haven for rest and amusement, where comfort was the first consideration and appearance the last. Bridgie’s mending-basket stood on the floor, Jack’s pipe peered from behind a chimney-piece ornament, and a bulky blotter and well-filled ink-bottle showed that the writing-table was really and seriously meant for use. There was a writing-table in Miss Munns’s drawing-room also, on which were set out, in formal order, a papier-maché blotter embellished with a view of York Minster by moonlight, a brass ink-stand, which would have been insulted by the touch of ink, and a penholder with a cornelian handle which had never known a nib. Not the most daring of visitors had ever been known to desecrate that shrine. When the mistress of the house wished to write a letter, she spread a newspaper over the dining-room table, and a sheet of blotting-paper over that, and carefully unlocked the desk which had been a present from Cousin Mary Evans on her sixteenth birthday! It is extraordinary what a complete change of air may be obtained sometimes by merely crossing a road, or going into the house at the other side of a dividing wall! Sylvia felt that she might have travelled a hundred miles, so entirely different were the conditions by which she found herself surrounded. By and by the three brothers arrived in a body, letting themselves into the house with a latch-key, and talking together in eager undertones in the hall. Bridgie sat still with a mischievous smile on her lips, and presently the drawing-room door was noiselessly opened for half a dozen inches, and round the corner appeared a brown head, a white forehead, and a pair of curious brown eyes. Sylvia’s cheeks were as pink as her dress by the time that those eyes met hers, but she was the only person to show signs of embarrassment. “Pat” came forward to shake hands with swift cordiality, followed in succession by Jack and Miles, and the three big brothers stood beside the sofa, looking down on their guest with kindly scrutiny. Pat’s twinkling smile was an augury for future friendship; Miles’s air of angelic sympathy was as good as a tonic; while the rapt gaze of Jack’s fine eyes seemed to imply that never, no never, had he beheld a girl who so absolutely fulfilled his ideal of womanhood! It was nothing that the conversation was most ordinary and impersonal, concerning itself mostly with such matters as the weather, the trains from the city, and the Christmas traffic. The atmosphere was full of subtle flattery, and Sylvia purred with satisfaction like a sleek little kitten that stretches up its neck to meet an unaccustomed caress. Nothing is so inspiring as appreciation, and she was quite startled by the aptness and brilliancy of her own remarks during the meal which followed. Jack helped his guest in to dinner, and once again the pungent odour from the kitchen attracted notice and remark, whereat Bridgie bridled complacently, and when the macaroni was brought to table it did indeed look a most attractive dish to be the work of an amateur. So brown was it, so mellow of tint, with such promise of richness, that the general choice settled on it in preference to its more modest neighbour. Sylvia was naturally helped in advance, and the moment of swallowing the first spoonful was momentous, and never to be forgotten. What had happened she could not tell; the room swam round her, the tears poured from her eyes. She recovered from a paralysing shock of surprise just in time to see Pat’s mouth open wide to receive a heaped-up spoonful, to hear him roar like a wounded bull, and make a dash from the room. “What is the matter?” cried Bridgie in amaze, and Jack smoothed out the smoking macaroni on his plate and replied cheerfully— “Scalded himself as usual! He is so impetuous with his food. Do him good to have a lesson.” Then he in his turn partook of the dainty, and his eyes grew bigger and bigger, rounder and rounder, the Adam’s apple worked violently in his throat. For one moment it seemed as though he too would fly from the room, but presently the struggle was over, and he leaned back in his chair, pale and dejected, his glance meeting Sylvia’s with melancholy sympathy. “What is the matter?” queried Bridgie once more, and this time there was a touch of testiness in her voice, for it was trying to have her efforts treated with such want of appreciation, and even if the dish were not all that could be desired, consideration for her feelings might have kept her brothers silent before a stranger. “Miles, you taste it!” she cried, and Miles smacked his lips for a thoughtful moment, and pronounced sturdily— “It’s very good!” Sylvia groaned involuntarily; she could not help it, and Jack gasped with incredulous dismay, staring at his brother as if he could not believe his senses. “Well, I always did say that there was nothing in this wide world which would quell your appetite, but this beats everything! Take another spoonful—I dare you to do it!” “All right, here goes! It’s a very good mixture,” said Miles complacently, swallowing spoonful after spoonful, while his vis-à-vis looked on with distended eyes, and Pat stood transfixed upon the threshold. As for Bridgie, her face brightened with relief, and she smiled upon her younger brother with grateful affection. “That’s right, Miles; never mind what they say! You are the greatest comfort I have. Some people are so saucy there is no pleasing them. You and I will enjoy it, if no one else will.” So far she had prudently refrained from experimenting on her own account, but now she took up her spoon, and there was a breathless silence in the room while she lifted it to her lips. It fell back on the plate with a rattle and clang, and an agonised glance roamed round the table from one face to another. “Oh—oh—oh! How p–p–p–perfectly awful! What can have happened? It was so nice when I left it! Has anyone”—the voice took a tone of indignation—“have any of you boys been playing tricks on me?” “How could we, now, if you think of it? We have been upstairs or in the drawing-room ever since we came back. It’s not the will that’s wanting, but the opportunity!” cried the boys in chorus; but it was not a time for joking, and Bridgie smote upon the table-gong with a determined hand. “Then it must be Sarah’s fault. She has done something to it. It is too bad—I took such pains!” She looked pathetically at the red marks which still lingered on her fingers from that painful cutting and scraping, and there was a distinct air of resentment in the voice in which she questioned her assistant a moment later. Sarah was a round-faced, vacant-looking damsel of sixteen summers, who had come straight from an industrial home to serve in the O’Shaughnessy family. She was scrupulously clean, admirably willing, and so blindly obedient that in the bosom of the family she was known by the title of “Casabianca.” She understood to a nicety how to dust and sweep, make beds and turn out a room, but the manners and customs of gentlefolk had been an unknown science to her before entering her present situation, and anything that Bridgie chose to do was, in her eyes, a demonstration of what was right and proper. She adored her young mistress, and trembled at the new tone of severity in which she was addressed. “Please, ma’am, I did nothing at it!” “But something has happened to it, Sarah—that’s quite certain. Think now—think carefully what you have done since I left the kitchen. I am not angry, only anxious to find out what has gone wrong.” It was really most embarrassing. The three young gentlemen were watching her with laughing eyes, the pretty young lady in the pink dress was staring at her plate and twisting her lips to keep from smiling, the Missis sat up straight in her chair and looked so grave and masterful. Like Topsy of old, Sarah tried hard to find something to confess, but failed to recall any delinquencies. “I took it out of the oven when you said, and put it on a plate. I brought it into the room—” “You are quite sure you didn’t let anything fall into it by mistake?” “Please, ma’am, there was nothing to fall. I had tidied the things away before I touched it. I put the macaroni sticks back in the bag and the beeswax along of the turpentine for to-morrow’s cleaning—all that you didn’t use for the pudding.” “The—the—what?” gasped Bridgie breathlessly. But the next moment a great burst of laughter all round the table greeted the solution of the mystery. Pat capered about the floor, Jack put his elbows on the table and peered at Sylvia with dancing eyes, Miles undauntedly helped himself to another spoonful, and wagged his head as who should say that, beeswax or no beeswax, he stuck to his favourable verdict on the “mixture.” Bridgie’s soft, gurgling laugh was full of unaffected enjoyment. “Did ever I hear the like of that? It was a lump of beeswax, and I mistook it for cheese! It looked just like it—so smooth, and yellow, and hard—too hard, maybe—but I was blaming Mary for that, not the cheese, and thinking myself so good and economical to use it up! Beeswax and macaroni! Oh—oh—I’ll never forget it while I live!” “It’s a very pretty nose you’ve got, dear, but it’s not much use to you, I’m afraid,” said Jack teasingly. “Did it never occur to you one moment that it was rather highly scented, and the scent a little different from the ordinary common or garden cheese?” and Bridgie shook her head in solemn denial. “Never the ghost of a suspicion! It shows how easily our senses are deceived when we get a fixed idea in our heads; but indeed you were not much cleverer yourselves. Every man of you had something to say about the smell, but not a hint of what it was!” “I thought it was rather spring-cleaningey,” Sylvia said mischievously. “Never mind, Bridgie dear—it has been a great success. I do feel so much at home—more so than I should have done after a dozen formal dinners where everything went right. I shall always remember it too, and how Mr Miles declared it was nice!” “Don’t call him ‘Mr,’ please! He is only seventeen, though he is the champion eater of the world. I wonder what exactly is the effect of beeswax taken internally! You must tell us all about it, Miles, if you live to the morning!” “How pleased Pixie will be!” murmured Bridgie reflectively, leaving her hearers to decide whether she referred to Miles’s problematical disease or the latest culinary disaster, and once again Sylvia admired the happy faculty of seizing on the humorous side of a misfortune which seemed to be possessed so universally by the O’Shaughnessy family. <hr></div> <div class="bodytext"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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