The Head of the House of CoombeBurnett, Frances Hodgson
General
The Head of the House of Coombe
Burnett, Frances Hodgson
England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
“Now you keep that in your mind,” she had said when she had finished
and Robin had almost choked in her awful little struggle to keep back
all sound.
The one thing Andrews was surest of was that nobody would come upstairs
to the Nursery to inquire the meaning of any cries which were not
unearthly enough to disturb the household. So it was easy to regulate
the existence of her charge in such a manner as best suited herself.
“Just give her food enough and keep her from making silly noises when
she wants what she doesn’t get,” said Andrews to her companions below
stairs. “That one in the drawing-room isn’t going to interfere with the
Nursery. Not her! I know my business and I know how to manage her kind.
I go to her politely now and then and ask her permission to buy things
from Best’s or Liberty’s or some other good place. She always stares a
minute when I begin, as if she scarcely understood what I was talking
about and then she says ‘Oh, yes, I suppose she must have them.’ And I
go and get them. I keep her as well dressed as any child in Mayfair.
And she’s been a beauty since she was a year old so she looks first
rate when I wheel her up and down the street, so the people can see
she’s well taken care of and not kept hidden away. No one can complain
of her looks and nobody is bothered with her. That’s all that’s wanted
of _me_. I get good wages and I get them regular. I don’t turn up my
nose at a place like this, whatever the outside talk is. Who cares in
these days anyway? Fashionable people’s broader minded than they used
to be. In Queen Victoria’s young days they tell me servants were no
class that didn’t live in families where they kept the commandments.”
“Fat lot the commandments give any one trouble in these times,” said
Jennings, the footman, who was a wit. “There’s one of ’em I could
mention that’s been broken till there’s no bits of it left to keep. If
I smashed that plate until it was powder it’d have to be swept into the
dust din. That’s what happened to one or two commandments in
particular.”
“Well,” remarked Mrs. Blayne, the cook, “she don’t interfere and he
pays the bills prompt. That’ll do _me_ instead of commandments. If
you’ll believe me, my mother told me that in them Queen Victoria days
ladies used to inquire about cold meat and ask what was done with the
dripping. Civilisation’s gone beyond that—commandments or no
commandments.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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