Dumps – A Plain Girl

“Yes, father,” I said meekly.

The joyful day arrived. Father could not take me to the station himself; but Hannah and I went there in a cab. Hannah was terribly cross. She said she knew I’d come home “that spoilt as would be past bearing.”

“You’re going to that fat, vulgar body,” she said. “Oh, don’t you talk to me about it’s being genteel to put on flesh, for I know better. But, anyhow, you’ll be a good riddance while you are away, Dumps. I’ll have time to give the parlour a rare good turning out.”

“Oh Hannah,” I said, nestling up a little closer to her in the cab, “aren’t you ever a little bit sorry that I’m going away?”

“Well, to be sure, child,” she said, her eyes twinkling, “I’ve no fault to find with you. You can’t help your looks, and you can’t help your aggrawating manners, and you can’t help your perverse ways of going on. But there, there! you’re as you’re made, and I’ve no fault to find with you.”

This was a great deal from Hannah, and I was obliged to be satisfied with it.

“I don’t think I shall ever grow up vain,” I thought, “and I suppose I ought to be satisfied.”

By-and-by I was cosily travelling first-class, for father was peremptory on this point, down to Chelmsford. I had left smoky London behind me, and was in the country. It was very cold in the country; snow was over everything, and the whole place looked so white and so sweet, and I just pined for a breath of the fresh country air. So I flung open the window of the carriage nearest to me and poked out my head.

A poke of another sort was presently administered somewhere in my back, and turning, I saw a most irate old gentleman who had been sitting at the other end of the carriage.

“I’ll thank you, young person,” he said, “to shut that window without a moment’s delay. You must be mad to put your head out like that in such bitter weather. I’m certain to be attacked by bronchitis with your wilful and violent way of letting such extreme cold into the carriage.”

I shut the window in a great hurry and sat down, very red in the face. The old gentleman did not take any further notice of me; he buried himself behind his paper. After a minute or two I heard him sneeze, and when he sneezed he gave me a very angry glance. Then he coughed, and then he sneezed again; finally he buried himself once more in his paper.

By-and-by we got to Chelmsford. It was nice to see Miss Grace Donnithorne standing on the platform. She was so round and so jolly and good-natured-looking, and her eyes, which were like little black beads in the middle of her face, quite shone with happiness.

“There you are, you poor Dumps!” she said. “Hop out, dear – hop out.”

I sprang from the carriage to the platform.

“Where is your luggage, my dear?”

“I have it,” I said; “it is in a brown-paper parcel on the luggage-rack.”

I thought I heard Miss Donnithorne murmur some thing; but all she said was, “Give it to me, dear. Be quick, or the train will move on.”

So I lugged it out as best I could, and there I stood in my shabby grey tweed dress, with my little worn-out jacket and my small hat, clutching at the brown-paper parcel. It was fairly heavy, for I had had to put other things into it besides the now dress and the new jacket; but it was tied very securely with cord, and addressed in my father’s handwriting with my name to the care of Miss Grace Donnithorne, Hedgerow House.

“Now then, child,” said Miss Grace, “we’ll get into my pony-trap and drive home. Why, you poor thing, you’re as cold as charity; and no wonder – no wonder.”

She insisted on carrying the brown-paper parcel herself. Waiting outside the station was a very neat little cart drawn by a shaggy pony. There was a boy standing by the pony’s head. He was dressed in quite a smart sort of dress, which I afterwards discovered was called livery. He sprang forward when he saw Miss Donnithorne and took the parcel, which she told him to put carefully in the back of the carriage, and on no account to trample on it with his feet.

Then we both got in, and a great fur rug was wrapped round us, and a cloak of Miss Donnithorne’s fastened round my neck.

“Now you can’t possibly catch cold,” she said. – “Jump up behind, Jim.”

Jim obeyed. Miss Donnithorne took the reins, and off we flew.

Oh, how wonderful, how delightful was the sensation!

We got to the cottage in about a quarter of an hour. Miss Grace told me that although it was called Hedgerow House, it was really only a cottage; but I could not tell what the difference was. It was a long, low, rambling sort of house, all built in one floor. The walls were so completely covered with creepers that, even though it was winter, you could not see much of the original stone-work; and where there were no creepers in full leaf there was trellis-work, which was covered with the bare branches of what in summer, Miss Donnithorne told me, would be roses.

“Do roses really grow like that?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” she replied; “and jasmine and wistaria and clematis, and all sorts of other things.”

The dog that Miss Donnithorne had warned me about came out to meet us. He was a fox-terrier, with a very sharp nose black as coal, and all the rest of his body was snow-white, except his sparkling, melting, wonderful brown eyes. I must say his eyes flashed very angrily when he first saw me, but Miss Donnithorne said, “Down, Snap – down!” and then she laid her hand on Snap’s collar and said, “You’re to be good to this young lady, Snap.”

Snap, after glancing at me in a crooked sort of way, as though he were not at all sure that he would not prove the significance of his name, condescended to wag his tail very slightly.

Miss Donnithorne took me into a very pretty little sitting-room at one side of the pretty little square hall. This room was filled with all sorts of unaccountable things. There were glass cases filled with stuffed birds of gay plumage. Miss Donnithorne glanced at them.

“I’ll tell you their names presently,” she said. “My brother who died brought them to me from South America.”

There were three of these cases. There were also stuffed animals, a hare, a fox, and a dog, perched above doors and at the top of the bookcase. Where there were not these cases of stuffed creatures there were books, so that you really could not see one scrap of the original paper of the room.

“Is this the drawing-room?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t call it by that name,” said Miss Donnithorne. “I sit here because I have all my books and papers handy about the room. But come to the fire and warm yourself.”

Certainly the fire in that dear little grate looked very different from the dismal fire which Miss Donnithorne had seen in our big, fog-begrimed parlour. I came close to it, and I even so far forgot proprieties as to drop on my knees and to hold out my hands to the blaze.

“Chilblains, I declare!” said Miss Donnithorne, taking one of my hands between both her own. “The best cure for those is to bathe your hands once or twice a day in a very strong solution of salt and hot water. The water must be as hot as you can bear it. But the best cure of all is a good circulation.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Bless you, child! Don’t you know, and you go to school every day?”

I stood up; my hands were warm, and my feet were tingling with renewed life. I had a curious sensation that my nose, which was by no means my best feature, was very red, for it certainly felt hot. I turned round and said, “I am quite warm now.”

“Then you would like to go up to your room. Nancy will go with you. She’ll unpack your parcel for you.”

“Oh no, thank you,” I replied. Then I added, “Is Nancy one of your servants?”

“I have only one servant in this tiny house, my dear, and Nancy is the one. She is a very good-natured sort of girl, and quite pleased at the idea of your coming to stay with me. I treat her as a sort of friend, you see, as she and I are all alone in the house together.”

I began to like Miss Donnithorne better and better each moment. She was so jolly. Whenever she spoke her eyes sparkled as though they were laughing, while the rest of her face was grave. All the same, I did not want Nancy, and I said so.

“I can help myself,” I argued. “We have only got Hannah in our big house.”

“Well, well, dear! if you can manage for yourself, I am the last one to wish you to do otherwise,” said Miss Donnithorne. “Here is your parcel; you can take it upstairs.”

“But how am I to find my way to my room?”

“You cannot lose it, my dear. Go up that little staircase, and when you reach the landing you will see an open door. Go through that doorway and you will be in your own bedroom. There’s no other bedroom on that landing, so you cannot miss it, can you?”

“No,” I replied, laughing.

I seized my brown-paper parcel and ran upstairs. It certainly was nice in the country, and how delicious a small house was! One could be warm in a small house; it was impossible to be warm in that great, rambling, old-fashioned house which belonged to the college and where father and the boys and I lived.

I found my bedroom. Now, girls who are accustomed to nice bedrooms all their lives take, I suppose, no particular interest in another nice bedroom when they are suddenly introduced into it. But my room at home could never, under any pretext, be considered nice. For some extraordinary reason, big as the house was, I had always slept next to Hannah in one of the attics. There was no earthly reason for this, except perhaps that when I was a child I was nearer to Hannah in case I should turn ill. It had never occurred to me to change my room, and it had certainly never occurred to anybody else to make it comfortable. There was a bedstead and a bed of a sort, and there was a looking-glass, with a crack right down the middle, which stood on a little deal table. The deal table was, as a rule, covered with a cloth, which seldom looked white on account of the London fogs. There was a huge wooden press – it could certainly not be called by the modern name of wardrobe – in which I kept my clothes; and there was a wooden chair on which I placed my candle at night, and that was about all. One side of the room had a sloping roof, and the window was at the best of times of minute proportions. But the room itself had a vast amount of unoccupied space; it was a huge room, and terribly ugly.