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Updated: June 11, 2025
Cochise lay inert, his mouth agape and his eyes rolled up so that only the whites could be seen. Lennon's deep-drawn sigh of satisfaction over that death-mask face caught in the midst and turned into a gasp. He flung himself about to the doorway of the still-room. Where the still had stood was now only a hole in the stone floor. He did not look too closely at the general wreckage.
But they smiled at each other, not ill-content, and as my grandmother passed to the dresser she paused by the great oak chair long enough to murmur, "She's coming round!" But my grandfather only smiled and looked towards the door that led to the still-room, pantries and so forth, as if he found the time long without his second pot of sugar ale. He was something of a diplomat, my grandfather.
Where there was a ceiling hole, one or more readily mounted with the candle to search the space above. But nowhere was trace found of Elsie, though the candle had burned to a stub when the searchers reached the last inner room. They came from it into a front room, one exit of which was closed with a padlocked door of heavy planks. Lennon recognized the entrance to the still-room.
'The still-room maid has gone to sleep, sir, Mortimer answered; and the bell was rung again and again, and whilst one of the company was pulling at the wire, another was hammering away with the knocker.
Gray had heard from Margery of the Sunday class which her young mistress had opened at Kirklands, and though, as the forester's wife remarked, "Elsie had enough and to spare of schoolin' already," yet it would only be a suitable mark of respect to the lady of Kirklands to send her there on Sunday afternoons; and so it happened that Elsie became one of Grace's scholars, sitting in the little still-room on Sunday afternoons, her large tender eyes answering in sympathetic flashes as the young teacher talked with the little company of those wonderful days when the Son o Man lived upon the earth, or told them some story of the earlier times of the world, when God's voice was heard in the beautiful garden in the cool of the day, or when he guided his chosen people by signs and wonders.
"There's Boyd Connoway has been sitting on my front doorstep," cried my Aunt Jen, "and if I've telled the man once, I've telled him twenty times!" "But how do ye ken, Janet?" said her mother out of the still-room where she was brewing nettle-beer. "He is not there now!" "How do I ken fine that!" snapped Jen.
Crabbe, the housekeeper, was seen with infinite trouble and disgust getting her large person over the stiles across the path fields. A call from her was almost a greater event than one from my Lady herself. Why! Mother had been her still-room maid, and always spoke to her as 'Ma'am, and she called her 'Mary, and she had chosen Matilda's name for her, and had given her a silver watch!
She revived the still-room, and became a great artist in jellies and elder and cowslip wine. And while I neglected the development of my uncle's finances and my own, in my scientific work and my absorbing conflict with the difficulties of flying, his schemes grew more and more expansive and hazardous, and his spending wilder and laxer.
In the still-room sat the band, who had stipulated for champagne as part of their fee, and who were already drinking beer. Scents of Araby came from the kitchen, mingled with cries. Margaret knew what had happened there, for it happened at Wickham Place. One of the wedding dishes had boiled over, and the cook was throwing cedar-shavings to hide the smell. At last they came upon the butler.
One of them was Elsie Gray, the forester's daughter, a pretty little girl with a sweet voice, and able to sing a great many hymns, so that Grace had no longer to perform solos to the still-room audience, but was accompanied by more than one voice timidly following Elsie's example, and joining in the singing.
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