'Why, what's the matter?' mother said.
'It's them children,' the cook replied, and somehow the children
all felt that they had known it from the first. They did not
remember having done anything extra wrong, but it is so frightfully
easy to displease a cook. 'It's them children: there's that there
new carpet in their room, covered thick with mud, both sides,
beastly yellow mud, and sakes alive knows where they got it. And
all that muck to clean up on a Sunday! It's not my place, and it's
not my intentions, so I don't deceive you, ma'am, and but for them
limbs, which they is if ever there was, it's not a bad place,
though I says it, and I wouldn't wish to leave, but--'
'I'm very sorry,' said mother, gently. 'I will speak to the
children. And you had better think it over, and if you REALLY wish
to go, tell me to-morrow.'
Next day mother had a quiet talk with cook, and cook said she
didn't mind if she stayed on a bit, just to see.
But meantime the question of the muddy carpet had been gone into
thoroughly by father and mother. Jane's candid explanation that
the mud had come from the bottom of a foreign tower where there was
buried treasure was received with such chilling disbelief that the
others limited their defence to an expression of sorrow, and of a
determination 'not to do it again'.
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