Sweethearts at Home

"More like me when I was his age!" he said. "But about the pastry-cook foolishness. What put that into his head?"

"It isn't foolishness," I answered, "and nobody that I know of ever puts anything into Hugh John's head!"

"He certainly is a wonder!" ("Corker" was what he said.)

Then I explained. One side of the villa was certainly expressly designed for a shop, the drawing-room and back drawing-room having side connections with the kitchen, only needed to be fitted with shelves and counters. The other side of the house and all above stairs might remain intact.

To my surprise Mr. Donnan never said a word concerning his position, his political aspirations, his illuminations, and disporting of the green harp of Ireland.

"But what are we to do with Cynthia's parlor furniture?" he asked instead. I could see a look of joy flash across his wife's face.

"Donnan," she said, "we will make the empty room above into a parlor. It's a perfect god-send. That boy should be paid by Government to make plans for people!"

Butcher Donnan bent his brows a moment on his wife. "Oh, you are in it, are you, Cynthia? Then I suppose I may as well go and order my white apron and cap?"

"Think how well they will become you!" said his wife, who also must have kissed the Blarney stone – the old one, not the new.

I agreed heartily. Butcher Donnan heaved a sigh. "And me, that never was seen but in decent blue," he said, "me to put on white like a mere bun-baker – and at my time of life!"

I said that it was certainly scandalous, but seeing that he would have nothing to do with the work except to sell, and arrange the windows for market-days, it would not matter so much.

"I shall need a small oven!" said his wife, "and a new set of French 'casserole molds' (which is to say patty-pans) and some smaller brass pans, also – "

"Perhaps I was wrong," I interposed cunningly, "to lead Mr. Donnan into so much expense."

I knew that, if anything, this would fetch him, and it did.

"Expense, is it? Expense, Miss Sweetheart! Ha, Ha!" He slapped his pocket. "Ask your friend Mr. Anderson down at the Bank (not that he will tell you!) whether Butcher Donnan is a warm man or not? He did not retire on four bare walls and a pocket-handkerchief of front-garden like some I could tell you of. Cynthia, you shall have all the brass pans you want, and as for the front shop – well, there won't be the like of it, not as far as Dumfries! We shall have a van too, gold and blue!"

Butcher Donnan was all on fire now, and when Nipper came in he clapped him on the shoulder, crying that he had better look sharp. He, Butcher Donnan, was going to set up such a shop as never was seen in Edam, and people would never be wanting "fresh meat" any more, but live on pies and shortcake and sweets for ever and ever.

At this Nipper looked no little relieved, and even listened to the details with a secret satisfaction.

"Father," he said, "the shop down town can run itself the first day of the opening of yours. I'm coming up to see you face the public in your new nursing togs!"

"You're an impudent young jackanapes," said his father, clenching his fists, "and if it were not that you have to stick to business and pay me the money you owe me, I would thrash you on the spot, old as you are!"

"Oh, let Nipper alone," said I, as cheerfully as I could, "he has the sweet tooth. I know it well, and I will wager he will yet be one of your best customers!"

"He will bring his money along with him then every time," growled his father. "And now I am off to see Mr. Hetherington, the architect. We must get things ship-shape!"

"But," cried his wife, "you have never tasted your tea!"

"Oh, bother my tea!" said Butcher Donnan, flouncing out, having fallen a victim to Hugh John's dangerous imagination. But he looked in again, his topper hat of Do-Nothing Pride already exchanged for the cap of Edam Commerce.

"Tell that young gentleman of yours," he said, "that, if things turn out well, he is always welcome at our shop, eh, Cynthia? And nothing to pay! And you, Miss Sweetheart, I hope to live long enough to bake your bride's-cake!"

"There he goes!" murmured his wife, "in a week Donnan will think that he has made every single thing in the shop, from the brass weights on the counter to the specimen birthday-cake in the window!"

X

NIPPER NEGLECTS HIS BUSINESS

August eighth. Aged Fifteen.

It is only a month since the Donnans opened their new shop up on the open square facing the market hill, and not far from the railway station. It was one of a row of villas, mostly tenanted by men who had returned from the "pack" – that is, who had made a neat little fortune in the business which calls itself Credit Drapery, but which, perhaps undeservedly, is called much harder names by its clients, especially when its back is turned.

These, being the aristocracy of a Shilling-a-Week and Cent. – per-Cent., objected exceedingly to a mere confectioner's shop thrusting its nose into the midst of their blue-stone walls, picked out by window-sills and lintels of raw-beef Locharbriggs freestone. But they could not help it, and after the chief of them all, Oliphant McGill, had smelt the now floury fist of the Reformed Idler, and been informed what would happen if he "heard a wurrrd out of the heads av wan o' them" – there fell a great peace on Whinstone Villas.

Some even became customers, and the new business increased with wonderous rapidity. Butcher Donnan became Sweet-Cake Donnan, but that made no difference to his force of arm, or to the respect in which he was universally held.

As he had prophesied, it was not long till he had a pale-blue-and-gold covered van on the road, dandily hooded in case of rain, and with two spy-holes so that the driver could see for himself what was coming up behind him.

From the Cave of Mystery high up on Hugh John's hill we could see it crawling along the roads (really it was going quite fast), like a lumpy cerulean beetle, the like of which for brilliance is not to be found in Curtis.

And the driver was Butcher Donnan himself. He knew all the farmers, and as he had made one fortune already, as fortunes went in Edam, the people were the readier to deal with him. Sometimes even the poorest would save up a penny for one of Mrs. Donnan's sponge-cakes. It was soon called the "Watering Cart," because in hot weather you could tell when it had gone along the road by the drip from the ice underneath, by means of which the jellies and confections were kept cool, while in winter the blue-and-gold beetle steamed like a volcano with hot mince-pies. Oh, Butcher Donnan believed in delivering his goods to the customer in the finest possible condition!

But this same Butcher Donnan being now driver and salesman-out-of-doors, and Mrs. Donnan equally busy in the kitchen, it was obvious that some one must be found for the shop. How I should have loved the job! But a certain Eben Dickson, apprentice with Nipper at the down town business, was called in, and so thoroughly proved his liking for the place in the course of a single afternoon that a more permanent and less appreciative successor was sought for.

Eben was laid up for several days, owing to an accident which happened to him when Butcher Donnan returned from his journeyings afield. It is understood that Nipper also remonstrated with him, without, however, the use of many words.

The van had therefore to be put out of commission for several days till another arrangement was possible. And again it was Hugh John who, with his eyelids half closed and looking at the bright landscape through the long three-draw telescope, cut the knot with a carelessly breathed suggestion.

"Why not ask Elizabeth Fortinbras?"

"They would never dare!" said I. "Old Fortinbras thinks himself no end of a swell!"

"Yes," said Hugh John, with tranquil irony, "he has failed in at least four businesses – last of all in a stamp-shop at East Dene, while the Donnans have only succeeded in one – and are on the point of making another fortune in the second. But let them ask Elizabeth. She will not say 'no'!"

"What of her mother?" I said – "her father?"

"Her mother cannot support her – her father won't. In six months she will have to support them both!" said the philosophic Hugh John. "You ask Lizzie. Lizzie is a sensible girl."

I asked Hugh John how he knew.

"Oh, just – I know!" he answered shortly. And in another than Hugh John I should have suspected something. Because, you know, Elizabeth Fortinbras is a very pretty girl – not beautiful, but with a freshness and charm that does far better, a laugh that is hung on a hair-trigger; not much education, of course, because her stupid old frump of a mother – yes, I can say it, though Lizzie would not – has never permitted her to be long away from her, but must be served like a duchess in her room on pretext of headaches and megrims.

Being without a servant, she leaves Elizabeth to do all the housework, and all that she knows she has learned from the books I have lent her – and, as I now begin to suspect, Hugh John also.

"And where is Elizabeth?" I said, for I saw the three-draw glass hovering in the neighborhood of the Fortinbras Cottage.

"Why, where should she be?" cried Hugh John. "At this hour of Monday morning she will certainly be hanging out the week's wash! There, put your eye down, don't stir the telescope, and you will see her. Also her sister Matilda sitting under a tree doing nothing but reading the latest story her mother has got out of the library!"

Hugh John's grasp of detail was something marvelous.

And, indeed, as I looked, through the tremble of the heat-mist the slender figure of Elizabeth Fortinbras jigged into view. She was standing on tiptoe, like the girl in the old illustrated nursery Caldecott, when

"By came a blackbird and snapped off her nose."