Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/186

Rh widow, one child not objected to? That'll fetch someone, and the little gell'll be handy to run errands and feed the rabbit. You ought to get some more rabbits. One rabbit don't pay."

"But suppose it's a little boy?" suggested Jane.

"It won't be a boy," said Gladys; "if their letters says 'boy,' don't you answer them. That's easy."

It was this suggestion which led to the advent of Mrs. Dadd—Adela Dadd was her full and incredible name—a thin, pale person with admirable testimonials from the superior clergy. She had been housekeeper to a rector and, before her marriage, nursery governess to a dean. Her daughter was seven—a lumpish child with an open mouth, an unconquerable stickiness of hands and face, and stockings that were always wrinkled. Mrs. Dadd simpered, she bridled, and she languished. She called her employers by their names every time she spoke to them, so as to make it quite plain that she did not belong to the class which says "Miss" or Ma'am." Neither Mrs. nor Miss Dadd really pleased anyone, but time was getting on. The house was ready, the servants were there, eating their heads off, and it was high time that the paying guests should begin to pay. Mrs. Dadd left much to be desired, but she was better than the bouncing lady with the almost grown-up daughter who had lived in the best families in garrison towns and wore more jewellery in the morning than most ladies would care to wear at night. She was also more possible than the trembling old lady of seventy who owned to forty-eight, and had dyed her poor white hair and powdered her wrinkled old cheeks, and put on a necklace of big pearl beads, all in the effort to find work that she could not do and wages that she could not earn. "It makes your blood run cold," said Jane, "Poor old thing! And she ought to be in the best arm chair, with a dozen children always running to Granny. That's what I like about the Chinese. They do look after old people. But we couldn't have taken her—now, could we, Luce?"

"Bless your heart, no, miss," said Gladys, who was present;