“Who is Kipper?” asked Emily.
“He’s a boy. His pa owns a fish shop. Kipper delivers the fish and helps ’bout the place.” Tilly paused to give Emily an appraising look. “ ’Bout y’r age, I’d say. Anyways, you’ll see him.” She snickered into her hand. “Can’t miss him much!”
The nature of this reply gave Emily another sinking feeling in the middle of her stomach. She suspected that this boy might be just one more horror she had to deal with. Did he specialize in nasty tricks? Can’t miss him much—it sounded ominous!
“There, soup’s done,” Tilly said. “Now us pours the hot water into the cups.”
It seemed to Emily that they had really just finished pouring hot water into the bowls. She has never before heard of a meal that was so awash in hot water.
“Did Aunt Twice pour for that, too?” she asked.
Tilly’s eyebrows rose. “Is that what you calls y’r aunt, Aunt Twice? What kind o’ name is that?”
“Mama was Aunt Twice’s sister, and Papa was Uncle Twice’s brother,” Emily explained. “That made them my aunt and uncle two times over.” She wondered how Tilly would act at this mention of an Uncle Twice. So far not one word had been mentioned about him. Emily would have questioned Aunt Twice, but her aunt had been so preoccupied and so distraught, she had not dared. Besides, wasn’t it up to Aunt Twice to tell her? She watched Tilly’s face anxiously for a sign.
Tilly’s brows knit together over pale, blank eyes as if straining Emily’s explanation through her brain was far more than she could manage. Then, to Emily’s terrible disappointment, she skipped right back to the first question.
“Well, y’r aunt done the hot water, too. You couldn’t, howsumever!” Tilly accompanied this pronouncement with a disdainful wrinkle of her flat nose. “Not just ’cause it’s heavy, but it ain’t easy not to slosh it over the edges and all. You gets to deliver the bread lumps, one to a customer.”
Emily began setting the hard, moldy bread on the tin plates. “What about the little bag?” she asked.
“Oh, that’s their little treat. You’ll see,” Tilly replied mysteriously, and placed the small green bowl at the head of the table. Just then, the grandfather clock began to toll the hour, and she sucked in her breath. “Us has to hurry, or us’ll get caught!”
Emily quickly set a bread lump on the last plate and started at once for the kitchen.
“Sssst!” Tilly clamped a firm hand around her arm.
“Us has to stay in the dining room case they wants more. Quick, over here!”
Tilly had no sooner spoken than the doors from the parlor flew open and Mrs. Meeching entered the dining room, gliding silently across the floor as if she had no legs at all. Her black skirt hissed faintly around her ankles. Behind her appeared the cozy Mrs. Plumly, her knitting needles clicking away busily.
Emily began to shiver as if a draught of cold air had blown across the floor. But Mrs. Meeching never even glanced in her direction, as if she were nothing more than a parlor shadow. Mrs. Meeching went at once to the head of the table, where she stood, hands folded, like a pillar of black frost. Mrs. Plumly placed herself at the chair across the table, needles clicking at full speed.
Then the old people began to drift through the doors. Eyes dull, hands shaking, legs trembling, they shuffled unsteadily across the floor in shabby shoes and carpet slippers. Their poor, sad, wrinkled faces were as lifeless as when they had stared at Emily across the parlor. Silently, each one found a place at the table.
As soon as the scraping of chairs, chillingly noted by Mrs. Meeching, had ended, she picked up the small green bowl containing the tiny muslin bag and raised her eyes heavenward.
“For what we are about to receive, let us be truly grateful.” She allowed a few moments for this thin blessing to arrive at its destination, and then went on. “Today, Mr. Figg will start the tea bag. If you please, Mrs. Quirk?”
A little muslin bag filled with a few tea leaves— so that’s what it was! With wide eyes, Emily watched the green bowl handed to Mrs. Quirk, and then on down the line of old, trembling hands to Mr. Figg. Carefully as his frail, thin hands would allow him, Mr. Figg lifted up the string and dipped the tea bag into his tin cup of hot water. A second passed. Two seconds passed. Mrs. Meeching sniffed audibly, and bowl and bag were handed to the next old person at the table.
Around the table travelled the tea bag, dipped into a cup at every place, except where Mrs. Plumly and Mrs. Meeching sat. And, of course, the place where no one sat at all. Long before the bag reached the last person, it must have left not the slightest shade of color in the cup, much less any taste of tea.
Even beyond this pitiful sideshow, it was the most dismal, silent dinner that Emily had ever witnessed. There were no sounds of laughter, no conversation of any kind. All that could be heard was the tick, tick of the clock, the click, click of Mrs. Plumly’s knitting needles, and an occasional weak ping of a tin spoon hitting against a bowl. No one finished any soup, and no one so much as tasted a bread lump. So, of course, when Mrs. Meeching asked if anyone cared for more, no one raised a hand. Thus the meal ended. Preceded by Mrs. Meeching and Mrs. Plumly, the old people shuffled silently out of the dining room.
Who was to eat all that delectable food Aunt Twice was preparing in the kitchen? Emily wondered. But she did not need to wonder long. A few moments later, the kitchen door burst open, and Aunt Twice flew out. Her apron whirling out around her, she
