Free Delsie by Joan Smith Page A

alive. You will make it so again in a very short time, I am convinced. Be firm with the Bristcombes. They have fallen into slovenly habits with Andrew not watching them as he ought.” Mrs. Bristcombe stood with her arms crossed, staring at them suspiciously, beyond earshot. Then deVigne was gone, and Delsie turned back to face her future.
    Be firm, he had said, and firmness was clearly needed here. “Have you any orders, miss?” Mrs. Bristcombe asked, an insolent expression settling on her coarse features as soon as deVigne was gone.
    “Yes, the title is ma’am, not miss,” Delsie said in her firmest teacher’s voice, “and I shall have a great many orders. The first is that you put on a clean apron, and not wear a soiled one in my house again.”
    “They don’t stay clean long in the kitchen,” the woman replied tartly, scanning her new mistress from head to toe in a very bold fashion. She had not behaved so when deVigne was with them.
    “Then you must have several, to provide yourself a change, must you not?”
    “Muslin costs money.”
    “All of three shillings a yard, for that quality. I shall buy some, and you will have it made into aprons.”
    Mrs. Bristcombe’s steely eyes narrowed, but she pulled in her horns. “What’ll you have for lunch?” she asked.
    “What have you got in the house?”
    “There’s cold mutton, and a long bill overdue at the grocer’s, while we’re on the subject.”
    “Why has it not been paid?”
    “The master’s been sick, as you might have heard,” she replied with a heavy sarcasm, to reveal her opinion of the marriage.
    “Prepare your accounts and present them to me in the study this afternoon, if you please. The mutton will do for luncheon, with an omelette. You know how to prepare an omelette?” Delsie asked, to retaliate for the former insult.
    The woman sniffed, and Mrs. Grayshott continued asserting her authority. “I am going to make a tour of the house. There is no need for you to accompany me. Miss Roberta will come with me.”
    “You won’t find it in very good shape.”
    “So I assumed,” Delsie replied, looking around her. “I understood girls were sent down from the Hall to tidy the place up.”
    “They’ve changed the linen upstairs and cleaned up the yellow guest room for you.”
    “Thank you, but I am not a guest in this house, Mrs. Bristcombe. I shall notify you what chamber I wish cleaned for me. Good day.” She turned and swept up the stairs, resolved not to let that Tartar get the upper hand of her, though she was weak from nervousness after the encounter.
    She walked along the upstairs hall till she heard voices. Bobbie and Miss Milne were putting off their pelisses, and she requested Bobbie to show her around the house. “I’ll show you my room first,” Bobbie said proudly. “This is it.”
    “I thought you would still be in the nursery,” Delsie answered. The room was not unpleasant, but it was not a child’s room. The furnishings were of dark oak, the window hangings and canopy of a somber, dusky blue. The paintings on the walls were also dark and not likely to appeal to a child.
    “I wondered when I came that she was not in the nursery , ” Miss Milne mentioned, “but I was told this is her room.”
    “Mrs. Bristcombe told you?” Mrs. Grayshott in quired, in a voice a little taut.
    “Yes, ma’am. I took my directions from her. I seldom spoke to Mr. Grayshott.”
    “I had to leave the nursery last year, ‘cause I couldn’t sleep with all the noise,” Bobbie told them. Delsie thought this referred to noises made by a drunken father, and asked no more questions, but the child spoke on. “Mrs. Bristcombe said it was the pixies in the orchard,” she said, her eyes big. “Daddy said it was the pixies too, so I got this nice room, like a grown-up.”
    “In the orchard?” Delsie asked, surprised that Mr. Grayshott would be allowed out of the house drunk. One would have thought his valet or Bristcombe would have kept