Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/187

188 "and I daresay if the truth was known she's only had a tiff with her son's wife that she lives with and started out to get a situation just to show her independence."

"Let's hope so, anyhow," said Jane. "What do you think of Mrs. Dadd, Gladys? Adela Dadd! What a name!"

"I think she'll be an addler, if you ask me," said Gladys. "Ad'la by name and addler by nature. I lay she'll try to do all her work with the tips of her fingers. But you can but try."

So they tried. Mrs. Dadd was not a good cook, but the food she prepared was not uneatable. A design of getting Mrs. Doveton to give her a few lessons in cookery was negatived by both with unexpected firmness.

"I couldn't take it on me, miss," said Mrs. Doveton.

"I'm not a child to be taught things," said Mrs. Dadd. "I've lived in the best families, where six was kept, besides a Buttons. No, thank you, Miss Quested. There's enough of the boiled mutton to do cold for to-day. It'll save cooking, Miss Quested. And the suet pudding warmed up with a nice potato, and there's your dinner."

And there, as she said, their dinner was.

A carefully-worded advertisement setting forth the advantages of residence at Cedar Court was inserted in three papers, and in a sort of ordered hush Cedar Court awaited applicants. There was a certain restfulness. Only the shop in the morning. In the afternoon leisure, then tea and tennis.

Gladys seemed to have come as a liberator. The shop no longer claimed the whole day. And tennis is a very agreeable game. "If only we could go on like this!" said Jane. "How nice it is to have servants and everything going by clockwork—at least, Addler Dadd certainly doesn't, but Stanley and Forbes do. I almost wish we hadn't advertised for the Pigs."

"Perhaps you'd like to go through the accounts," said Lucilla threateningly. But they went down to the tennis-court instead. Mr. Rochester was able to play tennis almost