Station Amusements in New Zealand, Lady Mary Anne Barker [fiction novels to read .TXT] 📗

in the world has happened?" I gasped, really frightened.

"Nothing, mem: its only them sheep," sobbed Euphemia, "calling like. They always makes me cry. Your tea 'll be ready directly, mem" (this last with a deep sigh.)

"Is it possible you are crying about that?" I inquired. "Yes, mem, yes," said Euphemia, in heart-broken accents, clasping Lois, who was positively howling, closer to her sympathetic heart. "Its terrible to hear 'em. They keeps calling and answering each other, and that makes us think of our home and friends." Now both these women had starved as factory "hands" all their lives, and I used to feel much more inclined to cry when they told me, all unconscious of the pathos, stories of their baby work and hardships. Certainly they had never seen a sheep until they came to New Zealand, and as they had particularly mentioned the silence which used to reign supreme at the manufactory during work hours, I could not trace the connection between a dingy, smoky, factory, and a bright spring morning in this delightful valley. "What nonsense!" I cried, half laughing and half angry. "You can't be in earnest. Why you must both be ill: let me give you each a good dose of medicine." I said this encouragingly, for there was nothing in the world Euphemia liked so much as good substantial physic, and the only thing I ever needed to keep locked up from her was the medicine drawer.

Euphemia seemed touched and grateful, and her face brightened up directly, but Lois looked up with her frightful little face more ugly than usual, as she said, spitefully, "Physic won't make them nasty sheep hold their tongues. I'm sure _this_ isn't the place for me to find my luck, so I'd rather go, if you please, mem. I've prospected-up every one o' them gullies and never seen the colour yet, so it ain't any good my stopping."

This was quite a fresh light thrown upon the purpose of Lois's long lonely rambles. She used to be off and away, over the hills whenever she had finished her daily work, and I encouraged her rambles, thinking the fresh air and exercise must do her a world of good. Never had I guessed that the sordid little puss was turning over every stone in the creek in her search for the shining flakes.

"Why did you think you should find gold here?" I asked.

"Because they do say it lies in all these mountain streams," she answered sullenly; "and I'm always dreaming of nuggets. Not that a girl with my face and figure wants 'dust' to set her off, however. But if its all the same to you, mem, I'd rather leave when Euphemia does."

"Are _you_ going, then?" I inquired, turning reproachfully to my pale-faced cook, who actually coloured a little as she answered, "Well, mem, you see Moffatt says he's got his window frames in now, and he'll glass them the very first chance, and I think it'll be more company for me on Saddler's Flat. So if you'll please to send me down in the dray, I should be obliged."

Here was a pretty upset, and I went about my poultry-feeding with a heavy heart. How was I to get fresh servants, and above all, what was I to do for cooking during the week they were away? These questions fortunately settled themselves in rather an unexpected manner. I heard of a very nice willing girl who was particularly anxious to come up as housemaid, to my part of the world, on condition that I should also engage as cook her sister, who was leaving a place on the opposite side of a range of high hills to the south. I shall only briefly say that all inquiries about these damsels proved satisfactory, and I could see Euphemia and Lois depart, with tolerable equanimity. The former wept, and begged for a box of Cockles' pills; but Lois tossed her elfish head, and gave me to understand that she had never been properly admired or appreciated whilst in my service.


Chapter XII: Culinary troubles.

I want to lodge a formal complaint against all cookery books. They are not the least use in the world, until you know how to cook! and then you can do without them. Somebody ought to write a cookery book which would tell an unhappy beginner whether the water in which she proposes to put her potatoes is to be hot or cold; how long such water is to boil; how she is to know whether the potatoes are done enough; how to dry them after they have boiled, and similar things, which make all the difference in the world.

To speak like Mr. Brooke for a moment. "Rice now: I have dabbled in that a good deal myself, and found it wouldn't do at all."

Of course in time, and after many failures, I did learn to boil a potato which would not disgrace me, and to bake bread, besides in time attaining to puddings and cakes, of which I don't mind confessing I was modestly proud. It used to be a study, I am told, to watch my face when a cake had turned out as it ought. Gratified vanity at the lavish encomiums bestowed on it, and horrified dismay at the rapidity with which a good sized cake disappeared down the throats of the company, warred together in the most artless fashion. The reflection would arise that it was almost a pity it should be eaten up so very fast; yet was it not a fine thing to be able to make such a cake! and oh, would the next be equally good?

One lesson I leaned in my New Zealand kitchen,--and that was not to be too hard on the point of breakages; for no one knows, unless from personal experience, how true was the Irish cook's apology for breaking a dish, when she said that it let go of her hand. I declare that I used, at last, to regard my plates and dishes, cups and saucers, yea, even the pudding basons, not as so much china and delf, but as troublesome imps, possessed with an insane desire to dash themselves madly on the kitchen floor upon the least provocation. Every woman knows what a slippery thing to hold is a baby in its tub. I am in a position to pronounce that wet plates and dishes are far more difficult to keep hold of. They have a way of leaping out of your fingers, which must be felt to be believed. After my first week in my kitchen I used to wonder, not at the breakages, but at anything remaining unbroken.

My maids had a very ingenious method of disposing of the fragments of their pottery misfortunes. At the back of the house an open patch of ground, thickly covered with an under-growth of native grass, and the usual large proportion of sheltering tussocks stretched away to the foot of the nearest hill. This was burned every second year or so, and when the fire had passed away the sight it revealed was certainly very curious. Beneath each tussock had lain concealed a small heap of broken china, which must have been placed there in the dead of the night. The delinquents had evidently been at the pains to perfect their work of destruction by reducing the china articles in question, to the smallest imaginable fragments, for fear of a protruding corner betraying the clever _cache_; and the contrast afforded to the blackened ground on which they lay, by the gay patches of tiny fragments huddled together, was droll indeed. That was the moment for recognising the remains of a favourite jug or plate, or even a beloved tea-cup. There they were all laid in neat little heaps, and the best of it was that the existing cook always declared loudly her astonishment at the base ingenuity of such conduct, although I could not fail to recognise many a plate or dish which had disappeared from the land of the living during her reign.

All housekeepers will sympathise with my feelings at seeing an amateur scullion, who had distinguished himself greatly in the Balaklava charge, but who appeared to have no idea that boiling water would scald his fingers,--drop the top plate of a pile which he had placed in a tub before him. In spite of my entreaties to be allowed to "wash-up" myself, he gallantly declared that he could do it beautifully, and that the great thing was to have the water very hot. In pursuance of this theory he poured the contents of a kettle of boiling water over his plates, plunged his hand in, and dropped the top plate, with a shriek of dismay, on those beneath it. Out of consideration for that well-meaning emigrant's feelings, I abstain from publishing the list of the killed and wounded, briefly stating that he might almost as well have fired a shot among my poor plates. A perfect fountain of water and chips and bits of china flew up into the air, and I really believe that hardly one plate remained uncracked. So much for one's friends. I must candidly state that although the servants broke a good deal, we destroyed twice as much amongst us during the week which must needs elapse between their departure and, the arrival of the new ones.

Shall I ever forget the guilty pallor which overspread the bronzed and bearded countenance of one of my guests, who particularly wished to dust the drawing-room ornaments, when on hearing a slight crash I came into the room and found him picking up the remains of a china shepherdess? Considering everything, I kept my temper remarkably well, merely observing that he had better go into the verandah and sit down with a book and his pipe, and send Joey in to help me. Joey was a little black monkey from Panama, who had to be provided with broken bits of delf or china in order that he might amuse himself by breaking them ingeniously into smaller fragments.

But the real object of this chapter was to relate some of my own private misfortunes in the cooking line. Once, when Alice S---- was staying with me and we had no servants, she and I undertook to bake a very infantine and unweaned pig. It was all properly arranged for us, and, making up a good fire, we proceeded to cook the little monster.

Hours passed by; all the rest of the dinner got itself properly cooked at the right time, but the pig presented exactly the same appearance at dewy eve as it had done in the early morn. We looked rather crest-fallen at its pale condition when one o'clock struck, but I said cheerfully, "Oh, I daresay it will be ready by supper!" But it was not: not a bit of it. Of course we searched in those delusive cookery books, but they only told us what sauces to serve with a roasted pig, or how to garnish it, entering minutely into a disquisition upon whether a lemon or an orange had better be stuck into its mouth. We wanted to know how to cook it, and why it would not get itself baked. About an hour before supper-time I grew desperate at the anticipation of the "chaff" Alice and I would certainly have to undergo if this detestable animal could not be produced in a sufficiently cooked state by evening. We took it out of the oven and contemplated it with silence and dismay. Fair as ever did that pig appear, and as if it had no present intention of being cooked at all. A sudden idea came into our heads at the same moment, but it was Alice who first whispered,