Emily hurried after her as she stumped back down the passageway. “Tilly?” She shuddered as she glanced back over her shoulder. “What—what about the Remembrance Room?”
“Well, what ’bout it?” snapped Tilly.
“When is the person going to be let out?”
“Oh, it,” said Tilly indifferently. “Depends on what it done. After dinner most likely. But if it done something terrible, like snitching two peppermints, then it gets to spend the night.”
Spend the night in the Remembrance Room! The thought was so horrifying that Emily failed to notice Tilly stopping at the top of the stairs until she felt a sharp pinch on her arm. The squeak she let out was cut in half by Tilly’s hand clapped tightly over her mouth.
“Shhh! That’s to remind you us is to be equals. Mrs. Meeching says so. So no nanky-panky from y’r aunt, or else! You gets that?”
The hand remained over Emily’s mouth until this entire message was delivered, so that when she felt another even sharper pinch on her arm, there was no squeak heard at all. This seemed very odd behavior from one who had so recently proclaimed she wanted the two “orphings” to be friends, but gave one more reason why Emily felt she had to be wary of Tilly.
They entered the bleak grey kitchen, which seemed surprisingly cheerful after the trip below. Perhaps this was because one of the two tables had been covered with gold-rimmed china bowls and platters heaped with green lettuces, red strawberries, and orange and yellow jellies, all making the room look as if a garden had sprung up suddenly in its midst. Aunt Twice stood at the table busily decorating the platters with frilly bits of parsley and wafer-thin slices of lemon. Was it possible that this beautiful food was for them after all? Emily wondered.
But Tilly stumped right past this table to the second one, which bore only a large, sickly brown basket of bread lumps, not too recently baked if slight tinges of grey-green here and there were any indication. Emily felt a strange, sinking feeling arrive suddenly in the pit of her stomach.
“What has kept you girls so long? You know you must be on time for serving, Tilly.” Aunt Twice wiped her hands nervously on her apron.
“Oh, ’tweren’t me! Emily took such a long time washing,” replied Tilly blandly as she wheeled a serving cart from the corner and hoisted the bread basket onto it.
Knowing the washroom down below as Aunt Twice did, Emily thought, she must surely have had some doubts about the truthfulness of this statement, but she pressed her lips together and kept silent. So, for that matter, did Emily, for if she had not learned already what was and what was not expected of her, a stinging spot on her arm was now there to remind her.
“Well, hurry, do hurry please! Oh dear, Emily, darl—” Aunt Twice caught herself. “Emily, you’ll need an apron. Tilly, do let her borrow one of yours, will you? Then come, please, and help me with the pot.”
Glowering at Emily, Tilly thumped to the wall and retrieved from a nail an apron as greasy as the one she had on. “Why can’t she help with it?”
Aunt Twice sighed. “Tilly, compare the size of Emily to the size of the pot. We would have soup all over the floor, and then what would we do for dinner?”
“Well, she can very well clean it then!” grumped Tilly. She wheeled the serving cart to the stove with a sour look on her face.
As Emily struggled to tie on the too-long, ugly apron, Aunt Twice and Tilly laboriously lifted from the stove to the cart both the huge grey pot and a steaming teakettle. Next to the kettle Aunt Twice set a small green china bowl containing a white muslin bag not much larger than a postage stamp. Attached to one corner of the bag was a short length of string. Emily wondered at the purpose of this odd little bag, but any question she might have had about it was cut off by a sharp sniff from Tilly.
“All right, you can come ’long now. Ain’t too helpless to push the cart, I trusts!”
Her long apron dragging on the floor, Emily quickly placed her pale hands next to Tilly’s rough red ones on the serving cart, and they pushed it through the swinging door into the dining room. The first thing Emily noticed was that a crockery bowl, plate, tin cup, and spoon were ominously missing from one place halfway down the long table. She tried not to think about it.
Tilly darted a quick look at the cheerless grandfather clock ticking mournfully in a corner. “Us hasn’t no time to shilly-shally. Mrs. Meeching likes ’em served ’fore they enters. So if you thinks you has the muscle”—this with a heavy note of disgust—“you holds up the bowls whilst I pours.”
Emily picked up a bowl promptly and managed to hold it steadily as Tilly ladled the unappetizing soup into it. She looked grudgingly pleased that Emily might actually be of some use after all.
“You knows,” Tilly said, almost cheerfully, “ ’fore you come, it were y’r aunt what poured, whilst I done the bowls. Pouring ain’t easy. It’s a step up in life, you might say.”
Emily tried to give Tilly a friendly smile over the soup bowl, although it was difficult for her to imagine anyone being pleased about such a promotion.
“O’ course,” Tilly went on, “I done it
