Part 2 — CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCES THE HOUSEHOLD.

On a raw, foggy-looking morning in November, three happy-looking girls sat in their cosy little sitting-room, taking their breakfast by lamplight. Neither the bitter weather, nor the fact that it was only eight o'clock on a winter morning, had power to damp their spirits. Their lives were much too full and occupied for any time to be given to depression. The tall, handsome girl of eighteen, with the brilliant complexion and nut-brown hair is Jane Orlingbury, the slighter one who sits at the side of the table near the fire is her sister Ada, the elder by five years. They are both eating their early breakfasts with hearty appetites, and quickly too, for there is not much time to lose. Ada is a type-writer in a very good office in the City. She has got on so well that she is earning £100 a year. Jane is a cookery teacher in a distant parish, and she must start off with her sister, for although her work does not begin so early as Ada's, who is due at her office at nine o'clock, she has a good way to go, and the marketing for her classes to do before she starts work at ten o'clock. The bright-eyed little woman at the head of the table, who is pouring out the coffee, is Marion Thomas. In appearance she presents a marked contrast to the two sisters, for she is short, plump, and dark. She lives with them, and does the housekeeping of the joint establishment and nearly all the cooking. If it were not for Marion, Ada laughingly tells their friends, it is more than probable that she and Jane, who come back in the evening rather tired and certainly disinclined for housework, would live altogether on tea, eggs, and toast, as some flippant individual once remarked that all women would be sure to do if left entirely to themselves. The Orlingburys and the Thomases all lived in the same little village in Nottinghamshire. About a year and a half ago the Orlingburys' home was broken up when their father died. The two girls warehoused their little stock of furniture, and spent some of the little capital that was left them in training to earn their own living, and as they had no relations with whom they could conveniently live, they stayed in a boarding-house while Ada was at Pitman's and Jane going backwards and forwards to the cookery-school. But they both felt a great lack of cosiness about the arrangement, and they were more than thankful when their old friend Marion, who had come to town a little time before them, and was staying with some cousins in Norland Square whilst she worked up a connection of music pupils, arranged to come and live with them.

Three months before our story begins they had taken unfurnished apartments in a little house in West Hampstead, for which they paid fifteen shillings a week. These consisted of a nice little sitting-room, a moderate-sized bedroom for the sisters and a small one for Marion, and a little room on the floor above the sitting-room, which had been fitted up as a kitchen, and the glories of which we will reveal later. They all made their own beds, and dusted their rooms before breakfast. On alternate weeks they took it in turns to get up half an hour earlier, dust the sitting-room, and lay and prepare the breakfast, for which everything was put ready overnight. The breakfast generally consisted of ham, brawn, pressed beef, or something similar. If any cooking had to be done, it was something that was finished very quickly, such as fried bacon or scrambled eggs.

Most of the furniture in the rooms belonged to the Orlingburys; they had brought it from their old home, so there was very little to buy. Marion was not an orphan, as they were; she was one of a very large family, and her father was a hardworking doctor. She was an excellent pianist and a clever housekeeper, for she and her sisters all had to help at home. She was sorry to leave her country home, but her parents were quite willing for her to do so, as there was little opportunity in their remote village for her to make practical use of her musical talent, which had been excellently cultivated. Marion had thirty pounds a year of her own that had been left her by her godmother, and she earned sixty pounds a year by her music pupils. As she taught only in the afternoons, her mornings were free for domestic matters.

Some of Jane's friends asked her once why she did not do the cooking instead of Marion, as she was duly qualified, but she declared that she had so much to do with food all the day long that she felt very disinclined to have to do with it after she got back in the evenings, whereas Marion had always been accustomed in her own home to spend her mornings in this manner, and she did not mind at all. In fact, the suggestion was Marion's own. Jane nearly always helped Marion in the final preparations, however, as we shall see. The friends had now been living together for three months, and the arrangement may be said to have answered in every way, for they were still on just as good terms as when they first set up house together.

"This ham toast is delicious, Jenny," said Ada. "You may make us some more whenever you feel inclined; but you must own you were lucky to have had Marion to cut it all up for you yesterday. Do you think you would have had the energy to do it all yourself this morning if she had not, or should we have had to eat the remains of the ham in all its bare coldness?"

"Don't tease, Jenny; I won't have it," laughed Marion. "I don't mind preparing the ham toast the least in the world. It is so seldom that we have anything for breakfast that needs more than five minutes cooking, and it would have been such a pity not to have ham toast when the opportunity came."

"Are you ever going to let Abigail do any of your cooking?" asked Ada. "Give us fair warning if you do, or, at all events, do not allow her to have too much scope for startling innovations."

At this the others laughed. Abigail was a girl of thirteen from the National School in the next street. She was a "half-timer." That is to say, she had only to spend half her time at school, either morning or afternoon, as she preferred. So she came from eight to nine every morning to brush the floors and wash up, and on every alternate morning she stayed until twelve o'clock and turned out a room, Marion superintending her work and giving her such help as she could spare from her cooking. Abigail was provided with breakfast, consisting of cocoa and bread and butter, and on days when she turned out a room she had dinner at twelve o'clock. Then she went home. She went to school in the afternoons, and at half-past six came back to "The Rowans," as the little house where the three friends lived was called (in honour of a mountain-ash in the front garden), to lay the table, dish up the seven o'clock dinner, clear away, wash up, and put everything ready for the next morning. Abigail's wages were two shillings and sixpence a week. Dinner was always over by a quarter past seven.

"I have not seen any signs of culinary genius at present," said Marion, "so I do not think you need fear for the present. In the meantime, have you two girls had enough? I must insist on your eating good breakfasts."

"Don't you begin to scold us, Mrs. Housekeeper," cried Jenny. "What about the lunches that you eat? You let out some shocking facts about some biscuits and a glass of milk the other day. I shall bribe the hand-maiden to watch you and see that you take proper care of yourself."

Marion meekly promised to be constant in her attentions to the brawn or similar solid dainties, and the two sisters, who by this time had finished their breakfasts and put on their things, kissed their friend affectionately and set off.

Marion helped Abigail to wash up the breakfast things, and then set her to work in the sitting-room. Abigail's full name was Susannah Abigail Bellamy.

"Please, ma'am, we call 'er 'Susie' at 'ome," said her mother when Marion went to engage her, but the Orlingburys thought the name "Abigail" such a delicious one for a little housemaid that they insisted on using it, and Abigail grinned delightedly.

Ada and Marion had provided her with neat print dresses and good serviceable aprons, and Jenny had prevailed upon her to put back the larger portion of a very unbecoming fringe, and had even managed to get her to do her hair so that it did not stick out in tufts.

When Abigail had got to work, Marion did her marketing, bringing most of the things back with her in a wonderful marketing-basket, and then she went to her kitchen. This, as we have said, was a little room on the floor above the sitting-room. Just outside was a housemaid's sink, which was very useful, as Marion had no scullery. A nice gas-stove had been fitted up on the "penny-in-the-slot" system which the gas company did free of cost, and by this all the cooking was done. Gas for five hours could be had by putting in a penny; if it was not wanted for five hours right off, the rest of the same pennyworth could be used next time cooking was to be done. This arrangement was very economical and formed their only gas bill, for they used a lamp in their sitting-room and candles in the bed-rooms. The gas bill was under a shilling a week.

Two shelves went all round the walls, one above the other, with nails in the edge for hanging jugs, measures, the dredger, and the grater. The shelves served instead of a dresser. A very small kitchen table stood just by the window, with two drawers in it. In one of these the tea and glass cloths in use were kept, and in the other the knives and forks.

The iron and wooden spoons used in cooking were kept in a box on the shelves. By its side the paste-board and rolling-pin might be seen, the latter a good straight thick one that rolled very evenly. The dripping-tins, baking-tins, baking-sheet, and meat-rack were on the shelves as well, and also the small dinner-service of which the establishment boasted.

Under the shelves on one side was a cupboard, which Marion now proceeded to unlock. On the top shelf of this was a row of coloured tins, containing tea, coffee, brown sugar, loaf sugar, rice, lentils, tapioca, and sultanas, several jars of jam (which had been sent them from the country), a packet of corn-flour, and a few other things. On the lower shelf were kept all cleaning materials, soap, soda, sand, emery, and house-flannel, and a spare scrubbing-brush.

Fortunately there was a cupboard under the stairs in which the housemaid's box with its blacking-brushes and the zinc pail and pan used for scrubbing and washing up could be kept. And on this cupboard Marion kept an sharp eye, and saw that it was kept very clean and the zinc pans well rinsed with hot water and soda after being used to prevent their getting greasy. The six enamel saucepans of varying sizes stood on a tripod stand in one corner.

The fittings up of the little kitchen were all new when the three friends started housekeeping, and it was economically managed, as the following account will show—

£s. d.

Two small enamel saucepans at 8½d. and 6½d.01 3

Two medium ditto at 1s. 2d. and 1s. 4d.02 6

Two enamel stewpans at 1s. 9d. and 2s.03 9

One paste-board01 9

One rolling-pin01 0

One dripping-tin00 8

One dripping-tin with meat-rack01 0

One baking-sheet00 8

Three pint pie-dishes at 3¾d.0011¼

Two large basins at 6½d.01 1

Three pudding-basins at 2d., 4d. and 6d.01 0

Three wooden spoons at 1d.00 3

Three iron spoons00 3

Flour dredger00 8½

Fine wire sieve01 9½

Enamel omelette-pan00 6½

Small iron frying-pan0010

Enamel pint and half-pint measures, 4½d. and 6½d.0011

Three jugs, quart, one and a half pints, and pint (to hold)01 9

Weights and scales014 6

Set of skewers00 4½

Tin fish-kettle08 6

£26 0¼

The pretty dinner-service that they used belonged to the Orlingburys, and the tea-service was Marion's. The tea-service and the tumblers and wine-glasses were kept in a cupboard in the sitting-room. The house-linen was kept in a cupboard on the landing outside the Orlingburys' bed-room. A good deal of it they had brought with them and the rest had been lent to the establishment by Mrs. Thomas, Marion's mother.

Coals were only needed for the sitting-room fire, as the three hardy country girls never indulged in such a luxury as a fire in their bed-rooms, and they found that half a ton of coals lasted them for six weeks.

Marion arranged her cooking so as to have as little as possible to do just before the dinner was served. For instance, on days when they had soup it would be made in the morning and warmed up at dinner-time; pies and milk puddings the same. Fish would be filleted, egged, and crumbed, ready to be fried at the last minute; and so would rissoles or cutlets. As there were only three of them, they never had big joints. Stews and curries were made early and warmed up; also such dishes as macaroni cheese.

By eleven o'clock Marion had generally done her cooking, and was free to read or work until two, when she went to her pupils. She came back at six o'clock, having had afternoon tea in the course of her work, and by that time the Orlingburys were back as well. She and Jane finished the preparations for dinner between them, and at half-past six Abigail returned to dish up and wait at table.

(To be continued.)