It was some days after the naming of the cottage that Mrs. Bobby
admitted me into her financial secrets, and explained the
difficulties that threatened her peace of mind. She still has
twenty-five pounds to pay before Comfort Cottage is really her own.
With her cow and her vegetable garden, to say nothing of her
procrastinating fowl, she manages to eke out a frugal existence, now
that her eldest son is in a blacksmith's shop at Worcester, and is
sending her part of his weekly savings. But it has been a poor
season for canaries, and a still poorer one for lodgers; for people
in these degenerate days prefer to be nearer the hotels and the mild
gaieties of the larger settlements. It is all very well so long as
I remain with her, and she wishes fervently that that may be for
ever; for never, she says, eloquently, never in all her Cheltenham
and Belvern experience, has she encountered such a jewel of a lodger
as her dear Miss 'Amilton, so little trouble, and always a bit of
praise for her plain cooking, and a pleasant word for the children,
to whom most lodgers object, and such an interest in the cow and the
fowl and the garden and the canaries, and such kindness in painting
the name of the cottage, so that it is the finest thing in the
village, and nobody can get past the 'ouse without stopping to gape
at it! But when her American lodger leaves her, she asks, - and who
is she that can expect to keep a beautiful young lady who will be
naming her own cottage and painting signboards for herself before
long, likely? - but when her American lodger is gone, how is she,
Mrs. Bobby, to put by a few shillings a month towards the debt on
the cottage? These are some of the problems she presents to me. I
have turned them over and over in my mind as I have worked, and even
asked Willie Beresford in my weekly letter what he could suggest.
Of course he could not suggest anything: men never can; although he
offered to come there and lodge for a month at twenty-five pounds a
week. All at once, one morning, a happy idea struck me, and I ran
down to Mrs. Bobby, who was weeding the onion-bed in the back
garden.
"Mrs. Bobby," I said, sitting down comfortably on the edge of the
lettuce-frame, "I am sure I know how you can earn many a shilling
during the summer and autumn months, and you must begin the
experiment while I am here to advise you. I want you to serve five-
o'clock tea in your garden."
"But, miss, thanking you kindly, nobody would think of stoppin' 'ere
for a cup of tea once in a twelvemonth."
"You never know what people will do until you try them. People will
do almost anything, Mrs. Bobby, if you only put it into their heads,
and this is the way we shall make our suggestion to the public. I
will paint a second signboard to hang below 'Comfort Cottage.' It
will be much more beautiful than the other, for it shall have a
steaming kettle on it, and a cup and saucer, and the words 'Tea
Served Here' underneath, the letters all intertwined with tea-
plants. I don't know how tea-plants look, but then neither does the
public. You will set one round table on the porch, so that if it
threatens rain, as it sometimes does, you know, in England, people
will not be afraid to sit down; and the other you will put under the
yew-tree near the gate. The tables must be immaculate; no spotted,
rumpled cloths and chipped cups at Comfort Cottage, which is to be a
strictly first-class tea station. You will put vases of flowers on
the tables, and you will not mix red, yellow, purple, and blue ones
in the same vase-"
"It's the way the good Lord mixes 'em in the fields," interjected
Mrs. Bobby piously.
"Very likely; but you will permit me to remark that the good Lord
can manage things successfully which we poor humans cannot. You
will set out your cream-jug that was presented to Mrs. Martha
Buggins by her friends and neighbours as a token of respect in 1823,
and the bowl that was presented to Mr. Bobby as a sword and shooting
prize in 1860, and all your pretty little odds and ends. You will
get everything ready in the kitchen, so that customers won't have to
wait long; but you will not prepare much in advance, so that
there'll be nothing wasted."
"It sounds beautiful in your mouth, miss, and it surely wouldn't be
any 'arm to make a trial of it."
"Of course it won't. There is no inn here where nice people will
stop (who would ever think of asking for tea at the Retired
Soldier?), and the moment they see our sign, in walking or driving
past, that moment they will be consumed with thirst. You do not
begin to appreciate our advantages as a tea station. In the first
place, there is a watering-trough not far from the gate, and drivers
very often stop to water their horses; then we have the lovely
garden which everybody admires; and if everything else fails, there
is the baby. Put that faded pink flannel slip on Jem, showing his
tanned arms and legs as usual, tie up his sleeves with blue bows as
you did last Sunday, put my white tennis-cap on the back of his
yellow curls, turn him loose in the hollyhocks, and await results.
Did I not open the gate the moment I saw him, though there was no
apartment sign in the window?"
Mrs. Bobby was overcome by the magic of my arguments, and as there
were positively no attendant risks, we decided on an early opening.
The very next day after the hanging of the second sign, I
superintended the arrangements myself.
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