Chapter 1

1. As much of our company as it likes to command.

2. As much dance music as it can get out of our fingers.

3. The complete transfer of all the bores among its guests from its
shoulders to ours.

4. The entire management of its Workhouse teas.

5. The wear and tear of mind of all its Christmas-trees and bran-pies.

6. The physicking of its sick dogs.

7. The setting its canaries' broken legs.

8. The general cheerful and grateful charing for it.

WHAT WE OWE TO THE BIG HOUSE.

1. Heartburnings from envy.

2. Headaches from dissipation.

3. The chronic discontent of our three maids.

4. The utter demoralisation of our boot-boy.

5. The acquaintance of several damaged fine ladies.

6. A roll of red flannel from the last wedding.

7. The occasional use of a garden-hose.

'There! I do not think that the joys and sorrows of living in a little
house under the shadow of a big one were ever more lucidly set forth,'
says an elder sister, holding up the slate on which she has just been
totting up this ingenious debit and credit account to a pink junior,
kneeling, head on hand, beside her; a junior who, not so long ago, did
sums on that very slate, and the straggle of briony round whose
sailor-hat tells that she has only just left the sunburnt harvest-fields
and the overgrown August hedgerows behind her.

'We have had a good deal of fun out of it too,' says she, rather
remorsefully. 'Do you remember'--with a sigh of recollected
enjoyment--'the day that we all blackened our faces with soot, and could
not get the soot off again afterwards?'

To what but a mind of seventeen could such a reminiscence have appeared
in the light of a departed joy?

'I have left out an item, I see,' says Margaret, running her eye once
again over her work; 'an unlimited quantity of the society of Freddy
Ducane, when nothing better turns up for him! Under which head, profit
or loss'--glancing with a not more than semi-amused smile at her
sister--'am I to enter it, eh, Prue?'

'Loss, loss!' replies Prue, with a suspiciously rosy precipitation. 'No
question about it; no one makes us lose so much time as he! Loss, loss!'

Margaret's eyes rest for an instant on her sister's face, and then
return not quite comfortably to the slate, upon which she painstakingly
inscribes the final entry, 'An unlimited quantity of Freddy Ducane's
society, when nothing better turns up for him!'

'"The acquaintance of several damaged fine ladies!"' reads Prue over her
sister's shoulder. 'I suppose that means Lady Betty?'

'I name no names,' replies Margaret gravely. 'I keep to a discreet
generality--

'"If it do her right,
Then she hath wrong'd herself; if she be free,
Why, then, my taxing like a wild-goose flies,
Unclaimed of any man."'

'Dear me!' repeats Prue, under her breath, in a rather awed voice; 'I
wonder what it feels like to be damaged!'

'You had better ask her,' drily.

'I suppose she says dreadful things,' continues the young girl, still
with that same awed curiosity. 'I heard Mrs. Evans telling you that she
"stuck at nothing." I wonder how she does it.'

'You had better ask her,' more drily.

'Damaged or not damaged,' cries Prue, springing up from her knees and
beginning to caper about the room, and sing to her own capering, 'we
shall meet her to-night--

'"For I'm to be married to-day, to-day,
For I'm to be married to-day."

Or if I am not to be married, I am to go to my first dinner-party, which
is a step in the right direction. Do you remember your first
dinner-party, Peggy? How did you feel? How did you look?'

'I looked very plain, I believe,' replies Peggy sedately. 'At least, I
was told so afterwards. I remember that I felt very swollen. I had a
cold, and was shy, and I think both combined to make me feel swelled.'

'It is a pity that shyness has not the same effect upon me,' says Prue,
stretching out a long girlish arm, whose thinness is apparent even
through its chintz muslin covering. 'The one thing that would really
improve my appearance'--stopping before the only looking-glass that the
little room boasts, and putting her finger and thumb in the hollows of
cheeks scarcely rounded enough to match the rest of the pansy-textured
child face--'the one thing that would really improve my appearance would
be to have the mumps.'

Peggy laughs.

'_Unberufen!_ I should catch them, and you cannot say that they would
improve me.'

'Never mind!' cries Prue, turning away with a joyous whirl from the
mirror. 'I shall do very well. There are people who admire bones! I
shall pass in a crowd.

'"For I'm to be married to-day, to-day,
For I'm to be married to-day."'

Her dance and her song have carried her out into the garden--the small
but now opulent garden; and, partly to look at her, partly to pasture
her eyes upon a yet more admired object, Peggy has followed her as far
as to the French window, and now stands leaning one handsome shoulder
against the door-post, and looking out upon her kingdom of flowers.

'We owe the Big House one good thing, at all events,' she says, a smile
of satisfaction stealing into her comely eyes. 'I never knew what peace
of mind was until I had a garden-hose.'

At this moment, in the hands of Jacob the gardener, it is playing
comfortably on the faces of the tea-roses, and a luxurious drip and
patter testify to their appreciation.

Prue has come back panting, and sunk out of breath on the window-sill.
The briony garland has fallen from her hat, and a little hairy dog is
now galloping about the lawn boastfully with it, his head held very
high. Something in his attitude gets on the nerves of the other animals;
for the parrot, brought out to sun himself upon the sward, raps out his
mysterious marine oath, which he generally keeps for a crisis; and the
white cat forgets herself so far as to deal him a swingeing box on the
ear as he passes her.

'I met the brougham from the Big House as I came up the lane,' says
Prue, trying to cool herself with the inadequate fan of a small
pocket-handkerchief; 'it was on its way back from the station. How tired
those poor horses must be of the road to the station! It had three
people inside it--Lady Betty, Mr. Harborough, and some third person.'

'Her maid, probably.'

Prue shakes her head.

'No; the maid followed in a fly with the nurses and children. Dear me,
Peggy, what a number of servants they take about with them--maid, one;
valet, two; footman, three; two nurses, five!'

'Nurses, five!' repeats Margaret inattentively, not thinking of what she
is saying, and with her eyes still riveted on the hose; 'surely that is
a very unusual number, isn't it?'

'I could not see the third person distinctly,' continues Prue
narratively; 'but I think it was the man whom Lady Betty brought with
her last year. She seems always to bring him with her.'

'More shame for her!' replies Peggy severely.

'Mr. Harborough was very fond of him, too,' says Prue reflectively. 'He
called him "John."'

'More fool he!' still severelier; then, with a sudden and happy change
of key, 'That is right, Jacob. Give it a good souse; it is covered with
fly.'

'Do not you wonder what we shall do to-night?' cries Prue, her mind
galloping gaily away from the blackness of Lady Betty's deeds to the
splendid whiteness of her own immediate prospect. 'Charades? dancing? I
prophesy dancing.'

'"For Willy will dance with Jane,"'

bursting out into song again--

'"And Betty has got her John."'

She breaks off, laughing. Margaret laughs too.

'Betty may have got her John, but I am sure I do not know who Peggy and
Prue will have, unless Freddy can split himself up into several young
gentlemen at once. He can do most things'--with a touch of
bitterness--'possibly he can do that too.'

'Or perhaps we shall go out star-gazing in the walled garden,'
interrupts Prue, hurriedly and redly shying away from the name thus
introduced. 'I always think that the stars look bigger from the walled
garden than anywhere else in the world.'

'Was it there that you and Freddy went to look for Cassiopeia's Chair?'
inquires Peggy drily; 'and were more than an hour and a half before you
could find her?'

'It is so odd that I had never noticed her before,' cries Prue hastily.
'She is such a queer shape, more like a long straggling W than a chair.'

'And, after all,' continues Margaret slowly, with an uneasy smile, and
not paying any heed to her sister's interpolation, 'she turned out to be
in the kiosk.'

Prue is silent. The little hairy dog has brought her ruined garland back
to her feet; and, holding it between his fore-paws, is painstakingly
biting off each leaf and tendril, and strewing them over the
close-shaven sward. The parrot is going to sleep, standing on one leg,
and making a clacking noise with his beak; not a posture that one would
have thought _a priori_ conducive to slumber.

'It was not a place in which one would have expected to find a large
constellation, was it?' asks Peggy, still with that same rather rueful
smile, and stroking her sister's childish head as she speaks--'the
darkest corner of a kiosk.'

But at that Prue leaps to her feet; and having, in the twinkling of an
eye, twitched the hose out of Jacob's hand, she points it at her sister.

'Mention the word kiosk once more,' cries she desperately, and winking
away a couple of tears, 'and you will not have a dry stitch upon you.'