Chapter 8

A PANIC IN THE HOUSE

I was sitting at my desk in London when a telegram came announcing
that my mother was again dangerously ill, and I seized my hat and
hurried to the station. It is not a memory of one night only. A
score of times, I am sure, I was called north thus suddenly, and
reached our little town trembling, head out at railway-carriage
window for a glance at a known face which would answer the question
on mine. These illnesses came as regularly as the backend of the
year, but were less regular in going, and through them all, by
night and by day, I see my sister moving so unwearyingly, so
lovingly, though with failing strength, that I bow my head in
reverence for her. She was wearing herself done. The doctor
advised us to engage a nurse, but the mere word frightened my
mother, and we got between her and the door as if the woman was
already on the stair. To have a strange woman in my mother's room
- you who are used to them cannot conceive what it meant to us.

Then we must have a servant. This seemed only less horrible. My
father turned up his sleeves and clutched the besom. I tossed
aside my papers, and was ready to run the errands. He answered the
door, I kept the fires going, he gave me a lesson in cooking, I
showed him how to make beds, one of us wore an apron. It was not
for long. I was led to my desk, the newspaper was put into my
father's hand. 'But a servant!' we cried, and would have fallen to
again. 'No servant, comes into this house,' said my sister quite
fiercely, and, oh, but my mother was relieved to hear her! There
were many such scenes, a year of them, I daresay, before we
yielded.

I cannot say which of us felt it most. In London I was used to
servants, and in moments of irritation would ring for them
furiously, though doubtless my manner changed as they opened the
door. I have even held my own with gentlemen in plush, giving one
my hat, another my stick, and a third my coat, and all done with
little more trouble than I should have expended in putting the
three articles on the chair myself. But this bold deed, and other
big things of the kind, I did that I might tell my mother of them
afterwards, while I sat on the end of her bed, and her face beamed
with astonishment and mirth.

From my earliest days I had seen servants. The manse had a
servant, the bank had another; one of their uses was to pounce
upon, and carry away in stately manner, certain naughty boys who
played with me. The banker did not seem really great to me, but
his servant - oh yes. Her boots cheeped all the way down the
church aisle; it was common report that she had flesh every day for
her dinner; instead of meeting her lover at the pump she walked him
into the country, and he