On Tuesdays we are not allowed to enter the drawing-room all day, and on Wednesdays the same restrictions are placed upon the dining-room. Indeed, on no day in the week is the whole of the house available, and upon no morning of the week has Mrs. Macdonald a spare moment to herself. After breakfast, when Palestrina and Thomas have gone, she conducts me to the morning-room, and placing the _Scotsman_ (the _Scotsman_ is used for lighting the fires, and is formally handed to the housemaid at six o'clock in the evening) by my chair, she says, "I hope you will be all right," and shuts the door upon me. During the morning she pops her head in from time to time, like an attentive guard who has been told to look after a lady on a journey, and nodding briskly from the door, she asks, "Are you all right? Sure you would not like milk or anything?" and then disappears again. With a little stretch of imagination one can almost believe that the green flag has been raised to the engine-driver, and that the train is moving off. At lunch-time she is so busy giving directions to her servants that she hardly ever hears what one says, and the most interesting piece of news is met with the somewhat irrelevant reply, "The bread-sauce, please, Jane, and then the cauliflower." Turning to one, she explains, "I always train my servants myself.... What were you saying just now?"
"I saw in the newspaper this morning," I repeat, "that H.M.S. ---- has foundered with all hands."
"In the middle of the table, if you please," says Mrs. Macdonald; "and then the coffee with the crystallized sugar--not the brown--and open the drawing-room windows when you have finished tidying there.... What were you saying? How sad these things are!"
The house is charmingly situated, with a most beautiful view over river and hills; but I really think my preoccupied friend hardly ever has time to look out of the window, and that to her the interior of a store-cupboard with neatly-filled shelves is more beautiful than anything which the realms of Nature can offer.
When Palestrina is present Mrs. Macdonald gives her recipes for making puddings and for taking stains out of carpets, and she advises her about spring-cleanings and the proper sifting of ashes at the back door. Mrs. Macdonald was brought up in the old days, when a young lady's training and education were frankly admitted to be a training for her as a wife. She belonged to the period when a girl with a taste for music was encouraged to practise "so that some day you may be able to play to your husband in the evenings, my dear," and was advised to be an early riser so that the house might be comfortable and in order when her husband should descend to breakfast. And now that that husband, having been duly administered to, is dead, Mrs. Macdonald's homely talents, once the means to an end, have resolved themselves into an end, a finality of effort. Mrs. Macdonald was brought up to be a housekeeper, and she remains a housekeeper, and jam-pots and preserving-pans form the boundary line of her life and the limit of her horizon.