I should like to call back a day of her life as it was at this time, when her spirit was as bright as ever and her hand as eager, but she was no longer able to do much work. It should not be difficult, for she repeated herself from day to day and yet did it with a quaint unreasonableness that was ever yielding fresh delight. Our love for her was such that we could easily tell what she would do in given circumstances, but she had always a new way of doing it.
Well, with break of day she wakes and sits up in bed and is standing in the middle of the room. So nimble was she in the mornings (one of our troubles with her) that these three actions must be considered as one; she is on the floor before you have time to count them. She has strict orders not to rise until her fire is lit, and having broken them there is a demure elation on her face. The question is what to do before she is caught and hurried to bed again. Her fingers are tingling to prepare the breakfast; she would dearly love to black-lead the grate, but that might rouse her daughter from whose side she has slipped so cunningly. She catches sight of the screen at the foot of the bed, and immediately her soft face becomes very determined. To guard her from draughts the screen had been brought here from the lordly east room, where it was of no use whatever. But in her opinion it was too beautiful for use; it belonged to the east room, where she could take pleasant peeps at it; she had objected to its removal, even become low-spirited. Now is her opportunity. The screen is an unwieldy thing, but still as a mouse she carries it, and they are well under weigh when it strikes against the gas-bracket in the passage. Next moment a reproachful hand arrests her. She is challenged with being out of bed, she denies it—standing in the passage. Meekly or stubbornly she returns to bed, and it is no satisfaction to you that you can say, ‘Well, well, of all the women!’ and so on, or ‘Surely you knew that the screen was brought here to protect you,’ for she will reply scornfully, ‘Who was touching the screen?’
By this time I have wakened (I am through the wall) and join them anxiously: so often has my mother been taken ill in the night that the slightest sound from her room rouses the house. She is in bed again, looking as if she had never been out of it, but I know her and listen sternly to the tale of her misdoings. She is not contrite. Yes, maybe she did promise not to venture forth on the cold floors of daybreak, but she had risen for a moment only, and we just t’neaded her with our talk about draughts—there were no such things as draughts in her young days—and it is more than she can do (here she again attempts to rise but we hold her down) to lie there and watch that beautiful screen being spoilt. I reply that the beauty of the screen has ever been its miserable defect: ho, there! for a knife with which to spoil its beauty and make the bedroom its fitting home. As there is no knife handy, my foot will do; I raise my foot, and then—she sees that it is bare, she cries to me excitedly to go back to bed lest I catch cold. For though, ever careless of herself, she will wander the house unshod, and tell us not to talk havers when we chide her, the sight of one of us similarly negligent rouses her anxiety at once. She is willing now to sign any vow if only I will take my bare feet back to bed, but probably she is soon after me in hers to make sure that I am nicely covered up.
It is scarcely six o’clock, and we have all promised to sleep for another hour, but in ten minutes she is sure that eight has struck (house disgraced), or that if it has not, something is wrong with the clock. Next moment she is captured on her way downstairs to wind up the clock. So evidently we must be up and doing, and as we have no servant, my sister disappears into the kitchen, having first asked me to see that ‘that woman’ lies still, and ‘that woman’ calls out that she always does lie still, so what are we blethering about?
She is up now, and dressed in her thick maroon wrapper; over her shoulders (lest she should stray despite our watchfulness) is a shawl, not placed there by her own hands, and on her head a delicious mutch. O that I could sing the pæan of the white mutch (and the dirge of the elaborate black cap) from the day when she called witchcraft to her aid and made it out of snow-flakes, and the dear worn hands that washed it tenderly in a basin, and the starching of it, and the finger-iron for its exquisite frills that looked like curls of sugar, and the sweet bands with which it tied beneath the chin! The honoured snowy mutch, how I love to see it smiling to me from the doors and windows of the poor; it is always smiling—sometimes maybe a wavering wistful smile, as if a tear-drop lay hidden among, the frills. A hundred times I have taken the characterless cap from my mother’s head and put the mutch in its place and tied the bands beneath her chin, while she protested but was well pleased. For in her heart she knew what suited her best and would admit it, beaming, when I put a mirror into her hands and told her to look; but nevertheless the cap cost no less than so-and-so, whereas—Was that a knock at the door? She is gone, to put on her cap!
She begins the day by the fireside with the New Testament in her hands, an old volume with its loose pages beautifully refixed, and its covers sewn and resewn by her, so that you would say it can never fall to pieces. It is mine now, and to me the black threads with which she stitched it are as part of the contents. Other books she read in the ordinary manner, but this one differently, her lips moving with each word as if she were reading aloud, and her face very solemn. The Testament lies open on her lap long after she has ceased to read, and the expression of her face has not changed.
I have seen her reading other books early in the day but never without a guilty look on her face, for she thought reading was scarce respectable until night had come. She spends the forenoon in what she calls doing nothing, which may consist in stitching so hard that you would swear she was an over-worked seamstress at it for her life, or you will find her on a table with nails in her mouth, and anon she has to be chased from the garret (she has suddenly decided to change her curtains), or she is under the bed searching for band-boxes and asking sternly where we have put that bonnet. On the whole she is behaving in a most exemplary way to-day (not once have we caught her trying to go out into the washing-house), and we compliment her at dinner-time, partly because she deserves it, and partly to make her think herself so good that she will eat something, just to maintain her new character. I question whether one hour of all her life was given to thoughts of food; in her great days to eat seemed to her to be waste of time, and afterwards she only ate to boast of it, as something she had done to please us. She seldom remembered whether she had dined, but always presumed she had, and while she was telling me in all good faith what the meal consisted of, it might be brought in. When in London I had to hear daily what she was eating, and perhaps she had refused all dishes until they produced the pen and ink. These were flourished before her, and then she would say with a sigh, ‘Tell him I am to eat an egg.’ But they were not so easily deceived; they waited, pen in hand, until the egg was eaten.
She never ‘went for a walk’ in her life. Many long trudges she had as a girl when she carried her father’s dinner in a flagon to the country place where he was at work, but to walk with no end save the good of your health seemed a very droll proceeding to her. In her young days, she was positive, no one had ever gone for a walk, and she never lost the belief that it was an absurdity introduced by a new generation with too much time on their hands. That they enjoyed it she could not believe; it was merely a form of showing off, and as they passed her window she would remark to herself with blasting satire, ‘Ay, Jeames, are you off for your walk?’ and add fervently, ‘Rather you than me!’ I was one of those who walked, and though she smiled, and might drop a sarcastic word when she saw me putting on my boots, it was she who had heated them in preparation for my going. The arrangement between us was that she should lie down until my return, and to ensure its being carried out I saw her in bed before I started, but with the bang of the door she would be at the window to watch me go: there is one spot on the road where a thousand times I have turned to wave my stick to her, while she nodded and smiled and kissed her hand to me. That kissing of the hand was the one English custom she had learned.
In an hour or so I return, and perhaps find her in bed, according to promise, but still I am suspicious. The way to her detection is circuitous.
‘I’ll need to be rising now,’ she says, with a yawn that may be genuine.
‘How long have you been in bed?’
‘You saw me go.’
‘And then I saw you at the window. Did you go straight back to bed?’
‘Surely I had that much sense.’
‘The truth!’
‘I might have taken a look at the clock first.’
‘It is a terrible thing to have a mother who prevaricates. Have you been lying down ever since I left?’
‘Thereabout.’
‘What does that mean exactly?’
‘Off and on.’
‘Have you been to the garret?’
‘What should I do in the garret?’
‘But have you?’
‘I might just have looked up the garret stair.’
‘You have been redding up the garret again!’
‘Not what you could call a redd up.’
‘O, woman, woman, I believe you have not been in bed at all!’
‘You see me in it.’
‘My opinion is that you jumped into bed when you heard me open the door.’
‘Havers.’
‘Did you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then, when you heard me at the gate?’
‘It might have been when I heard you at the gate.’
As daylight goes she follows it with her sewing to the window, and gets another needleful out of it, as one may run after a departed visitor for a last word, but now the gas is lit, and no longer is it shameful to sit down to literature. If the book be a story by George Eliot or Mrs. Oliphant, her favourites (and mine) among women novelists, or if it be a Carlyle, and we move softly, she will read, entranced, for hours. Her delight in Carlyle was so well known that various good people would send her books that contained a page about him; she could place her finger on any passage wanted in the biography as promptly as though she were looking for some article in her own drawer, and given a date she was often able to tell you what they were doing in Cheyne Row that day. Carlyle, she decided, was not so much an ill man to live with as one who needed a deal of managing, but when I asked if she thought she could have managed him she only replied with a modest smile that meant ‘Oh no!’ but had the face of ‘Sal, I would have liked to try.’
One lady lent her some scores of Carlyle letters that have never been published, and crabbed was the writing, but though my mother liked to have our letters read aloud to her, she read every one of these herself, and would quote from them in her talk. Side by side with the Carlyle letters, which show him in his most gracious light, were many from his wife to a friend, and in one of these a romantic adventure is described—I quote from memory, and it is a poor memory compared to my mother’s, which registered everything by a method of her own: ‘What might be the age of Bell Tibbits? Well, she was born the week I bought the boiler, so she’ll be one-and-fifty (no less!) come Martinmas.’ Mrs. Carlyle had got into the train at a London station and was feeling very lonely, for the journey to Scotland lay before her and no one had come to see her off. Then, just as the train was starting, a man jumped into the carriage, to her regret until she saw his face, when, behold, they were old friends, and the last time they met (I forget how many years before) he had asked her to be his wife. He was very nice, and if I remember aright, saw her to her journey’s end, though he had intended to alight at some half-way place. I call this an adventure, and I am sure it seemed to my mother to be the most touching and memorable adventure that can come into a woman’s life. ‘You see he hadna forgot,’ she would say proudly, as if this was a compliment in which all her sex could share, and on her old tender face shone some of the elation with which Mrs. Carlyle wrote that letter.
But there were times, she held, when Carlyle must have made his wife a glorious woman. ‘As when?’ I might inquire.
‘When she keeked in at his study door and said to herself, “The whole world is ringing with his fame, and he is my man!”’
‘And then,’ I might point out, ‘he would roar to her to shut the door.’
‘Pooh!’ said my mother, ‘a man’s roar is neither here nor there.’ But her verdict as a whole was, ‘I would rather have been his mother than his wife.’
So we have got her into her chair with the Carlyles, and all is well. Furthermore, ‘to mak siccar,’ my father has taken the opposite side of the fireplace and is deep in the latest five columns of Gladstone, who is his Carlyle. He is to see that she does not slip away fired by a conviction, which suddenly overrides her pages, that the kitchen is going to rack and ruin for want of her, and she is to recall him to himself should he put his foot in the fire and keep it there, forgetful of all save his hero’s eloquence. (We were a family who needed a deal of watching.) She is not interested in what Mr. Gladstone has to say; indeed she could never be brought to look upon politics as of serious concern for grown folk (a class in which she scarcely included man), and she gratefully gave up reading ‘leaders’ the day I ceased to write them. But like want of reasonableness, a love for having the last word, want of humour and the like, politics were in her opinion a mannish attribute to be tolerated, and Gladstone was the name of the something which makes all our sex such queer characters. She had a profound faith in him as an aid to conversation, and if there were silent men in the company would give him to them to talk about, precisely as she divided a cake among children. And then, with a motherly smile, she would leave them to gorge on him. But in the idolising of Gladstone she recognised, nevertheless, a certain inevitability, and would no more have tried to contend with it than to sweep a shadow off the floor. Gladstone was, and there was an end of it in her practical philosophy. Nor did she accept him coldly; like a true woman she sympathised with those who suffered severely, and they knew it and took counsel of her in the hour of need. I remember one ardent Gladstonian who, as a general election drew near, was in sore straits indeed, for he disbelieved in Home Rule, and yet how could he vote against ‘Gladstone’s man’? His distress was so real that it gave him a hang-dog appearance. He put his case gloomily before her, and until the day of the election she riddled him with sarcasm; I think he only went to her because he found a mournful enjoyment in seeing a false Gladstonian tortured.
It was all such plain-sailing for him, she pointed out; he did not like this Home Rule, and therefore he must vote against it.
She put it pitiful clear, he replied with a groan.
But she was like another woman to him when he appeared before her on his way to the polling-booth.
‘This is a watery Sabbath to you, I’m thinking,’ she said sympathetically, but without dropping her wires—for Home Rule or no Home Rule that stocking-foot must be turned before twelve o’clock.
A watery Sabbath means a doleful day, and ‘A watery Sabbath it is,’ he replied with feeling. A silence followed, broken only by the click of the wires. Now and again he would mutter, ‘Ay, well, I’ll be going to vote—little did I think the day would come,’ and so on, but if he rose it was only to sit down again, and at last she crossed over to him and said softly, (no sarcasm in her voice now), ‘Away with you, and vote for Gladstone’s man!’ He jumped up and made off without a word, but from the east window we watched him strutting down the brae. I laughed, but she said, ‘I’m no sure that it’s a laughing matter,’ and afterwards, ‘I would have liked fine to be that Gladstone’s mother.’
It is nine o’clock now, a quarter-past nine, half-past nine—all the same moment to me, for I am at a sentence that will not write. I know, though I can’t hear, what my sister has gone upstairs to say to my mother:—
‘I was in at him at nine, and he said, “In five minutes,” so I put the steak on the brander, but I’ve been in thrice since then, and every time he says, “In five minutes,” and when I try to take the table-cover off, he presses his elbows hard on it, and growls. His supper will be completely spoilt.’
‘Oh, that weary writing!’
‘I can do no more, mother, so you must come down and stop him.’
‘I have no power over him,’ my mother says, but she rises smiling, and presently she is opening my door.
‘In five minutes!’ I cry, but when I see that it is she I rise and put my arm round her. ‘What a full basket!’ she says, looking at the waste-paper basket, which contains most of my work of the night and with a dear gesture she lifts up a torn page and kisses it. ‘Poor thing,’ she says to it, ‘and you would have liked so fine to be printed!’ and she puts her hand over my desk to prevent my writing more.
‘In the last five minutes,’ I begin, ‘one can often do more than in the first hour.’
‘Many a time I’ve said it in my young days,’ she says slowly.
‘And proved it, too!’ cries a voice from the door, the voice of one who was prouder of her even than I; it is true, and yet almost unbelievable, that any one could have been prouder of her than I.
‘But those days are gone,’ my mother says solemnly, ‘gone to come back no more. You’ll put by your work now, man, and have your supper, and then you’ll come up and sit beside your mother for a whiley, for soon you’ll be putting her away in the kirk-yard.’
I hear such a little cry from near the door.
So my mother and I go up the stair together. ‘We have changed places,’ she says; ‘that was just how I used to help you up, but I’m the bairn now.’
She brings out the Testament again; it was always lying within reach; it is the lock of hair she left me when she died. And when she has read for a long time she ‘gives me a look,’ as we say in the north, and I go out, to leave her alone with God. She had been but a child when her mother died, and so she fell early into the way of saying her prayers with no earthly listener. Often and often I have found her on her knees, but I always went softly away, closing the door. I never heard her pray, but I know very well how she prayed, and that, when that door was shut, there was not a day in God’s sight between the worn woman and the little child.
And sometimes I was her maid of all work.
It is early morn, and my mother has come noiselessly into my room. I know it is she, though my eyes are shut, and I am only half awake. Perhaps I was dreaming of her, for I accept her presence without surprise, as if in the awakening I had but seen her go out at one door to come in at another. But she is speaking to herself.
‘I’m sweer to waken him—I doubt he was working late—oh, that weary writing—no, I maunna waken him.’
I start up. She is wringing her hands. ‘What is wrong?’ I cry, but I know before she answers. My sister is down with one of the headaches against which even she cannot fight, and my mother, who bears physical pain as if it were a comrade, is most woebegone when her daughter is the sufferer. ‘And she winna let me go down the stair to make a cup of tea for her,’ she groans.
‘I will soon make the tea, mother.’
‘Will you?’ she says eagerly. It is what she has come to me for, but ‘It is a pity to rouse you,’ she says.
‘And I will take charge of the house to-day, and light the fires and wash the dishes—’
‘Na, oh no; no, I couldna ask that of you, and you an author.’
‘It won’t be the first time, mother, since I was an author.’
‘More like the fiftieth!’ she says almost gleefully, so I have begun well, for to keep up her spirits is the great thing to-day.
Knock at the door. It is the baker. I take in the bread, looking so sternly at him that he dare not smile.
Knock at the door. It is the postman. (I hope he did not see that I had the lid of the kettle in my other hand.)
Furious knocking in a remote part. This means that the author is in the coal cellar.
Anon I carry two breakfasts upstairs in triumph. I enter the bedroom like no mere humdrum son, but after the manner of the Glasgow waiter. I must say more about him. He had been my mother’s one waiter, the only manservant she ever came in contact with, and they had met in a Glasgow hotel which she was eager to see, having heard of the monstrous things, and conceived them to resemble country inns with another twelve bedrooms. I remember how she beamed—yet tried to look as if it was quite an ordinary experience—when we alighted at the hotel door, but though she said nothing I soon read disappointment in her face. She knew how I was exulting in having her there, so would not say a word to damp me, but I craftily drew it out of her. No, she was very comfortable, and the house was grand beyond speech, but—but—where was he? he had not been very hearty. ‘He’ was the landlord; she had expected him to receive us at the door and ask if we were in good health and how we had left the others, and then she would have asked him if his wife was well and how many children they had, after which we should all have sat down together to dinner. Two chambermaids came into her room and prepared it without a single word to her about her journey or on any other subject, and when they had gone, ‘They are two haughty misses,’ said my mother with spirit. But what she most resented was the waiter with his swagger black suit and short quick steps and the ‘towel’ over his arm. Without so much as a ‘Welcome to Glasgow!’ he showed us to our seats, not the smallest acknowledgment of our kindness in giving such munificent orders did we draw from him, he hovered around the table as if it would be unsafe to leave us with his knives and forks (he should have seen her knives and forks), when we spoke to each other he affected not to hear, we might laugh but this uppish fellow would not join in. We retired, crushed, and he had the final impudence to open the door for us. But though this hurt my mother at the time, the humour of our experiences filled her on reflection, and in her own house she would describe them with unction, sometimes to those who had been in many hotels, often to others who had been in none, and whoever were her listeners she made them laugh, though not always at the same thing.
So now when I enter the bedroom with the tray, on my arm is that badge of pride, the towel; and I approach with prim steps to inform Madam that breakfast is ready, and she puts on the society manner and addresses me as ‘Sir,’ and asks with cruel sarcasm for what purpose (except to boast) I carry the towel, and I say ‘Is there anything more I can do for Madam?’ and Madam replies that there is one more thing I can do, and that is, eat her breakfast for her. But of this I take no notice, for my object is to fire her with the spirit of the game, so that she eats unwittingly.
Now that I have washed up the breakfast things I should be at my writing, and I am anxious to be at it, as I have an idea in my head, which, if it is of any value, has almost certainly been put there by her. But dare I venture? I know that the house has not been properly set going yet, there are beds to make, the exterior of the teapot is fair, but suppose some one were to look inside? What a pity I knocked over the flour-barrel! Can I hope that for once my mother will forget to inquire into these matters? Is my sister willing to let disorder reign until to-morrow? I determine to risk it. Perhaps I have been at work for half an hour when I hear movements overhead. One or other of them is wondering why the house is so quiet. I rattle the tongs, but even this does not satisfy them, so back into the desk go my papers, and now what you hear is not the scrape of a pen but the rinsing of pots and pans, or I am making beds, and making them thoroughly, because after I am gone my mother will come (I know her) and look suspiciously beneath the coverlet.
The kitchen is now speckless, not an unwashed platter in sight, unless you look beneath the table. I feel that I have earned time for an hour’s writing at last, and at it I go with vigour. One page, two pages, really I am making progress, when—was that a door opening? But I have my mother’s light step on the brain, so I ‘yoke’ again, and next moment she is beside me. She has not exactly left her room, she gives me to understand; but suddenly a conviction had come to her that I was writing without a warm mat at my feet. She carries one in her hands. Now that she is here she remains for a time, and though she is in the arm-chair by the fire, where she sits bolt upright (she loved to have cushions on the unused chairs, but detested putting her back against them), and I am bent low over my desk, I know that contentment and pity are struggling for possession of her face: contentment wins when she surveys her room, pity when she looks at me. Every article of furniture, from the chairs that came into the world with me and have worn so much better, though I was new and they were second-hand, to the mantle-border of fashionable design which she sewed in her seventieth year, having picked up the stitch in half a lesson, has its story of fight and attainment for her, hence her satisfaction; but she sighs at sight of her son, dipping and tearing, and chewing the loathly pen.
‘Oh, that weary writing!’
In vain do I tell her that writing is as pleasant to me as ever was the prospect of a tremendous day’s ironing to her; that (to some, though not to me) new chapters are as easy to turn out as new bannocks. No, she maintains, for one bannock is the marrows of another, while chapters—and then, perhaps, her eyes twinkle, and says she saucily, ‘But, sal, you may be right, for sometimes your bannocks are as alike as mine!’
Or I may be roused from my writing by her cry that I am making strange faces again. It is my contemptible weakness that if I say a character smiled vacuously, I must smile vacuously; if he frowns or leers, I frown or leer; if he is a coward or given to contortions, I cringe, or twist my legs until I have to stop writing to undo the knot. I bow with him, eat with him, and gnaw my moustache with him. If the character be a lady with an exquisite laugh, I suddenly terrify you by laughing exquisitely. One reads of the astounding versatility of an actor who is stout and lean on the same evening, but what is he to the novelist who is a dozen persons within the hour? Morally, I fear, we must deteriorate—but this is a subject I may wisely edge away from.
We always spoke to each other in broad Scotch (I think in it still), but now and again she would use a word that was new to me, or I might hear one of her contemporaries use it. Now is my opportunity to angle for its meaning. If I ask, boldly, what was chat word she used just now, something like ‘bilbie’ or ‘silvendy’? she blushes, and says she never said anything so common, or hoots! it is some auld-farrant word about which she can tell me nothing. But if in the course of conversation I remark casually, ‘Did he find bilbie?’ or ‘Was that quite silvendy?’ (though the sense of the question is vague to me) she falls into the trap, and the words explain themselves in her replies. Or maybe to-day she sees whither I am leading her, and such is her sensitiveness that she is quite hurt. The humour goes out of her face (to find bilbie in some more silvendy spot), and her reproachful eyes—but now I am on the arm of her chair, and we have made it up. Nevertheless, I shall get no more old-world Scotch out of her this forenoon, she weeds her talk determinedly, and it is as great a falling away as when the mutch gives place to the cap.
I am off for my afternoon walk, and she has promised to bar the door behind me and open it to none. When I return,—well, the door is still barred, but she is looking both furtive and elated. I should say that she is burning to tell me something, but cannot tell it without exposing herself. Has she opened the door, and if so, why? I don’t ask, but I watch. It is she who is sly now.
‘Have you been in the east room since you came in?’ she asks, with apparent indifference.
‘No; why do you ask?’
‘Oh, I just thought you might have looked in.’
‘Is there anything new there?’
‘I dinna say there is, but—but just go and see.’
‘There can’t be anything new if you kept the door barred,’ I say cleverly.
This crushes her for a moment; but her eagerness that I should see is greater than her fear. I set off for the east room, and she follows, affecting humility, but with triumph in her eye. How often those little scenes took place! I was never told of the new purchase, I was lured into its presence, and then she waited timidly for my start of surprise.
‘Do you see it?’ she says anxiously, and I see it, and hear it, for this time it is a bran-new wicker chair, of the kind that whisper to themselves for the first six months.
‘A going-about body was selling them in a cart,’ my mother begins, and what followed presents itself to my eyes before she can utter another word. Ten minutes at the least did she stand at the door argy-bargying with that man. But it would be cruelty to scold a woman so uplifted.
‘Fifteen shillings he wanted,’ she cries, ‘but what do you think I beat him down to?’
‘Seven and sixpence?’
She claps her hands with delight. ‘Four shillings, as I’m a living woman!’ she crows: never was a woman fonder of a bargain.
I gaze at the purchase with the amazement expected of me, and the chair itself crinkles and shudders to hear what it went for (or is it merely chuckling at her?). ‘And the man said it cost himself five shillings,’ my mother continues exultantly. You would have thought her the hardest person had not a knock on the wall summoned us about this time to my sister’s side. Though in bed she has been listening, and this is what she has to say, in a voice that makes my mother very indignant, ‘You drive a bargain! I’m thinking ten shillings was nearer what you paid.’
‘Four shillings to a penny!’ says my mother.
‘I daresay,’ says my sister; ‘but after you paid him the money I heard you in the little bedroom press. What were you doing there?’
My mother winces. ‘I may have given him a present of an old topcoat,’ she falters. ‘He looked ill-happit. But that was after I made the bargain.’
‘Were there bairns in the cart?’
‘There might have been a bit lassie in the cart.’
‘I thought as much. What did you give her? I heard you in the pantry.’
‘Four shillings was what I got that chair for,’ replies my mother firmly. If I don’t interfere there will be a coldness between them for at least a minute. ‘There is blood on your finger,’ I say to my mother.
‘So there is,’ she says, concealing her hand.
‘Blood!’ exclaims my sister anxiously, and then with a cry of triumph, ‘I warrant it’s jelly. You gave that lassie one of the jelly cans!’
The Glasgow waiter brings up tea, and presently my sister is able to rise, and after a sharp fight I am expelled from the kitchen. The last thing I do as maid of all work is to lug upstairs the clothes-basket which has just arrived with the mangling. Now there is delicious linen for my mother to finger; there was always rapture on her face when the clothes-basket came in; it never failed to make her once more the active genius of the house. I may leave her now with her sheets and collars and napkins and fronts. Indeed, she probably orders me to go. A son is all very well, but suppose he were to tread on that counterpane!
My sister is but and I am ben—I mean she is in the east end and I am in the west—tuts, tuts! let us get at the English of this by striving: she is in the kitchen and I am at my desk in the parlour. I hope I may not be disturbed, for to-night I must make my hero say ‘Darling,’ and it needs both privacy and concentration. In a word, let me admit (though I should like to beat about the bush) that I have sat down to a love-chapter. Too long has it been avoided, Albert has called Marion ‘dear’ only as yet (between you and me these are not their real names), but though the public will probably read the word without blinking, it went off in my hands with a bang. They tell me—the Sassenach tell me—that in time I shall be able without a blush to make Albert say ‘darling,’ and even gather her up in his arms, but I begin to doubt it; the moment sees me as shy as ever; I still find it advisable to lock the door, and then—no witness save the dog—I ‘do’ it dourly with my teeth clenched, while the dog retreats into the far corner and moans. The bolder Englishman (I am told) will write a love-chapter and then go out, quite coolly, to dinner, but such goings on are contrary to the Scotch nature; even the great novelists dared not. Conceive Mr. Stevenson left alone with a hero, a heroine, and a proposal impending (he does not know where to look). Sir Walter in the same circumstances gets out of the room by making his love-scenes take place between the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next, but he could afford to do anything, and the small fry must e’en to their task, moan the dog as he may. So I have yoked to mine when, enter my mother, looking wistful.
‘I suppose you are terrible thrang,’ she says.
‘Well, I am rather busy, but—what is it you want me to do?’
‘It would be a shame to ask you.’
‘Still, ask me.’
‘I am so terrified they may be filed.’
‘You want me to—?’
‘If you would just come up, and help me to fold the sheets!’
The sheets are folded and I return to Albert. I lock the door, and at last I am bringing my hero forward nicely (my knee in the small of his back), when this startling question is shot by my sister through the key-hole—
‘Where did you put the carrot-grater?’
It will all have to be done over again if I let Albert go for a moment, so, gripping him hard, I shout indignantly that I have not seen the carrot-grater.
‘Then what did you grate the carrots on?’ asks the voice, and the door-handle is shaken just as I shake Albert.
‘On a broken cup,’ I reply with surprising readiness, and I get to work again but am less engrossed, for a conviction grows on me that I put the carrot-grater in the drawer of the sewing-machine.
I am wondering whether I should confess or brazen it out, when I hear my sister going hurriedly upstairs. I have a presentiment that she has gone to talk about me, and I basely open my door and listen.
‘Just look at that, mother!’
‘Is it a dish-cloth?’
‘That’s what it is now.’
‘Losh behears! it’s one of the new table-napkins.’
‘That’s what it was. He has been polishing the kitchen grate with it!’
(I remember!)
‘Woe’s me! That is what comes of his not letting me budge from this room. O, it is a watery Sabbath when men take to doing women’s work!’
‘It defies the face of clay, mother, to fathom what makes him so senseless.’
‘Oh, it’s that weary writing.’
‘And the worst of it is he will talk to-morrow as if he had done wonders.’
‘That’s the way with the whole clanjam-fray of them.’
‘Yes, but as usual you will humour him, mother.’
‘Oh, well, it pleases him, you see,’ says my mother, ‘and we can have our laugh when his door’s shut.’
‘He is most terribly handless.’
‘He is all that, but, poor soul, he does his best.’
These familiar initials are, I suppose, the best beloved in recent literature, certainly they are the sweetest to me, but there was a time when my mother could not abide them. She said ‘That Stevenson man’ with a sneer, and, it was never easy to her to sneer. At thought of him her face would become almost hard, which seems incredible, and she would knit her lips and fold her arms, and reply with a stiff ‘oh’ if you mentioned his aggravating name. In the novels we have a way of writing of our heroine, ‘she drew herself up haughtily,’ and when mine draw themselves up haughtily I see my mother thinking of Robert Louis Stevenson. He knew her opinion of him, and would write, ‘My ears tingled yesterday; I sair doubt she has been miscalling me again.’ But the more she miscalled him the more he delighted in her, and she was informed of this, and at once said, ‘The scoundrel!’ If you would know what was his unpardonable crime, it was this: he wrote better books than mine.
I remember the day she found it out, which was not, however, the day she admitted it. That day, when I should have been at my work, she came upon me in the kitchen, ‘The Master of Ballantrae’ beside me, but I was not reading: my head lay heavy on the table, and to her anxious eyes, I doubt not, I was the picture of woe. ‘Not writing!’ I echoed, no, I was not writing, I saw no use in ever trying to write again. And down, I suppose, went my head once more. She misunderstood, and thought the blow had fallen; I had awakened to the discovery, always dreaded by her, that I had written myself dry; I was no better than an empty ink-bottle. She wrung her hands, but indignation came to her with my explanation, which was that while R. L. S. was at it we others were only ‘prentices cutting our fingers on his tools. ‘I could never thole his books,’ said my mother immediately, and indeed vindictively.
‘You have not read any of them,’ I reminded her.
‘And never will,’ said she with spirit.
And I have no doubt that she called him a dark character that very day. For weeks too, if not for months, she adhered to her determination not to read him, though I, having come to my senses and seen that there is a place for the ‘prentice, was taking a pleasure, almost malicious, in putting ‘The Master of Ballantrae’ in her way. I would place it on her table so that it said good-morning to her when she rose. She would frown, and carrying it downstairs, as if she had it in the tongs, replace it on its book-shelf. I would wrap it up in the cover she had made for the latest Carlyle: she would skin it contemptuously and again bring it down. I would hide her spectacles in it, and lay it on top of the clothes-basket and prop it up invitingly open against her tea-pot. And at last I got her, though I forget by which of many contrivances. What I recall vividly is a key-hole view, to which another member of the family invited me. Then I saw my mother wrapped up in ‘The Master of Ballantrae’ and muttering the music to herself, nodding her head in approval, and taking a stealthy glance at the foot of each page before she began at the top. Nevertheless she had an ear for the door, for when I bounced in she had been too clever for me; there was no book to be seen, only an apron on her lap and she was gazing out at the window. Some such conversation as this followed:—
‘You have been sitting very quietly, mother.’
‘I always sit quietly, I never do anything, I’m just a finished stocking.’
‘Have you been reading?’
‘Do I ever read at this time of day?’
‘What is that in your lap?’
‘Just my apron.’
‘Is that a book beneath the apron?’
‘It might be a book.’
‘Let me see.’
‘Go away with you to your work.’
But I lifted the apron. ‘Why, it’s “The Master of Ballantrae!”’ I exclaimed, shocked.
‘So it is!’ said my mother, equally surprised. But I looked sternly at her, and perhaps she blushed.
‘Well what do you think: not nearly equal to mine?’ said I with humour.
‘Nothing like them,’ she said determinedly.
‘Not a bit,’ said I, though whether with a smile or a groan is immaterial; they would have meant the same thing. Should I put the book back on its shelf? I asked, and she replied that I could put it wherever I liked for all she cared, so long as I took it out of her sight (the implication was that it had stolen on to her lap while she was looking out at the window). My behaviour may seem small, but I gave her a last chance, for I said that some people found it a book there was no putting down until they reached the last page.
‘I’m no that kind,’ replied my mother.
Nevertheless our old game with the haver of a thing, as she called it, was continued, with this difference, that it was now she who carried the book covertly upstairs, and I who replaced it on the shelf, and several times we caught each other in the act, but not a word said either of us; we were grown self-conscious. Much of the play no doubt I forget, but one incident I remember clearly. She had come down to sit beside me while I wrote, and sometimes, when I looked up, her eye was not on me, but on the shelf where ‘The Master of Ballantrae’ stood inviting her. Mr. Stevenson’s books are not for the shelf, they are for the hand; even when you lay them down, let it be on the table for the next comer. Being the most sociable that man has penned in our time, they feel very lonely up there in a stately row. I think their eye is on you the moment you enter the room, and so you are drawn to look at them, and you take a volume down with the impulse that induces one to unchain the dog. And the result is not dissimilar, for in another moment you two are at play. Is there any other modern writer who gets round you in this way? Well, he had given my mother the look which in the ball-room means, ‘Ask me for this waltz,’ and she ettled to do it, but felt that her more dutiful course was to sit out the dance with this other less entertaining partner. I wrote on doggedly, but could hear the whispering.
‘Am I to be a wall-flower?’ asked James Durie reproachfully. (It must have been leap-year.)
‘Speak lower,’ replied my mother, with an uneasy look at me.
‘Pooh!’ said James contemptuously, ‘that kail-runtle!’
‘I winna have him miscalled,’ said my mother, frowning.
‘I am done with him,’ said James (wiping his cane with his cambric handkerchief), and his sword clattered deliciously (I cannot think this was accidental), which made my mother sigh. Like the man he was, he followed up his advantage with a comparison that made me dip viciously.
‘A prettier sound that,’ said he, clanking his sword again, ‘than the clack-clack of your young friend’s shuttle.’
‘Whist!’ cried my mother, who had seen me dip.
‘Then give me your arm,’ said James, lowering his voice.
‘I dare not,’ answered my mother. ‘He’s so touchy about you.’
‘Come, come,’ he pressed her, ‘you are certain to do it sooner or later, so why not now?’
‘Wait till he has gone for his walk,’ said my mother; ‘and, forbye that, I’m ower old to dance with you.’
‘How old are you?’ he inquired.
‘You’re gey an’ pert!’ cried my mother.
‘Are you seventy?’
‘Off and on,’ she admitted.
‘Pooh,’ he said, ‘a mere girl!’
She replied instantly, ‘I’m no’ to be catched with chaff’; but she smiled and rose as if he had stretched out his hand and got her by the finger-tip.
After that they whispered so low (which they could do as they were now much nearer each other) that I could catch only one remark. It came from James, and seems to show the tenor of their whisperings, for his words were, ‘Easily enough, if you slip me beneath your shawl.’
That is what she did, and furthermore she left the room guiltily, muttering something about redding up the drawers. I suppose I smiled wanly to myself, or conscience must have been nibbling at my mother, for in less than five minutes she was back, carrying her accomplice openly, and she thrust him with positive viciousness into the place where my Stevenson had lost a tooth (as the writer whom he most resembled would have said). And then like a good mother she took up one of her son’s books and read it most determinedly. It had become a touching incident to me, and I remember how we there and then agreed upon a compromise she was to read the enticing thing just to convince herself of its inferiority.
‘The Master of Ballantrae’ is not the best. Conceive the glory, which was my mother’s, of knowing from a trustworthy source that there are at least three better awaiting you on the same shelf. She did not know Alan Breck yet, and he was as anxious to step down as Mr. Bally himself. John Silver was there, getting into his leg, so that she should not have to wait a moment, and roaring, ‘I’ll lay to that!’ when she told me consolingly that she could not thole pirate stories. Not to know these gentlemen, what is it like? It is like never having been in love. But they are in the house! That is like knowing that you will fall in love to-morrow morning. With one word, by drawing one mournful face, I could have got my mother to abjure the jam-shelf—nay, I might have managed it by merely saying that she had enjoyed ‘The Master of Ballantrae.’ For you must remember that she only read it to persuade herself (and me) of its unworthiness, and that the reason she wanted to read the others was to get further proof. All this she made plain to me, eyeing me a little anxiously the while, and of course I accepted the explanation. Alan is the biggest child of them all, and I doubt not that she thought so, but curiously enough her views of him are among the things I have forgotten. But how enamoured she was of ‘Treasure Island,’ and how faithful she tried to be to me all the time she was reading it! I had to put my hands over her eyes to let her know that I had entered the room, and even then she might try to read between my fingers, coming to herself presently, however, to say ‘It’s a haver of a book.’
‘Those pirate stories are so uninteresting,’ I would reply without fear, for she was too engrossed to see through me. ‘Do you think you will finish this one?’
‘I may as well go on with it since I have begun it,’ my mother says, so slyly that my sister and I shake our heads at each other to imply, ‘Was there ever such a woman!’
‘There are none of those one-legged scoundrels in my books,’ I say.
‘Better without them,’ she replies promptly.
‘I wonder, mother, what it is about the man that so infatuates the public?’
‘He takes no hold of me,’ she insists. ‘I would a hantle rather read your books.’
I offer obligingly to bring one of them to her, and now she looks at me suspiciously. ‘You surely believe I like yours best,’ she says with instant anxiety, and I soothe her by assurances, and retire advising her to read on, just to see if she can find out how he misleads the public. ‘Oh, I may take a look at it again by-and-by,’ she says indifferently, but nevertheless the probability is that as the door shuts the book opens, as if by some mechanical contrivance. I remember how she read ‘Treasure Island,’ holding it close to the ribs of the fire (because she could not spare a moment to rise and light the gas), and how, when bed-time came, and we coaxed, remonstrated, scolded, she said quite fiercely, clinging to the book, ‘I dinna lay my head on a pillow this night till I see how that laddie got out of the barrel.’
After this, I think, he was as bewitching as the laddie in the barrel to her—Was he not always a laddie in the barrel himself, climbing in for apples while we all stood around, like gamins, waiting for a bite? He was the spirit of boyhood tugging at the skirts of this old world of ours and compelling it to come back and play. And I suppose my mother felt this, as so many have felt it: like others she was a little scared at first to find herself skipping again, with this masterful child at the rope, but soon she gave him her hand and set off with him for the meadow, not an apology between the two of them for the author left behind. But near to the end did she admit (in words) that he had a way with him which was beyond her son. ‘Silk and sacking, that is what we are,’ she was informed, to which she would reply obstinately, ‘Well, then, I prefer sacking.’
‘But if he had been your son?’
‘But he is not.’
‘You wish he were?’
‘I dinna deny but what I could have found room for him.’
And still at times she would smear him with the name of black (to his delight when he learned the reason). That was when some podgy red-sealed blue-crossed letter arrived from Vailima, inviting me to journey thither. (His directions were, ‘You take the boat at San Francisco, and then my place is the second to the left.’) Even London seemed to her to carry me so far away that I often took a week to the journey (the first six days in getting her used to the idea), and these letters terrified her. It was not the finger of Jim Hawkins she now saw beckoning me across the seas, it was John Silver, waving a crutch. Seldom, I believe, did I read straight through one of these Vailima letters; when in the middle I suddenly remembered who was upstairs and what she was probably doing, and I ran to her, three steps at a jump, to find her, lips pursed, hands folded, a picture of gloom.
‘I have a letter from—’
‘So I have heard.’
‘Would you like to hear it?’
‘No.’
‘Can you not abide him?’
‘I cauna thole him.’
‘Is he a black?’
‘He is all that.’
Well, Vailima was the one spot on earth I had any great craving to visit, but I think she always knew I would never leave her. Sometime, she said, she should like me to go, but not until she was laid away. ‘And how small I have grown this last winter. Look at my wrists. It canna be long now.’ No, I never thought of going, was never absent for a day from her without reluctance, and never walked so quickly as when I was going back. In the meantime that happened which put an end for ever to my scheme of travel. I shall never go up the Road of Loving Hearts now, on ‘a wonderful clear night of stars,’ to meet the man coming toward me on a horse. It is still a wonderful clear night of stars, but the road is empty. So I never saw the dear king of us all. But before he had written books he was in my part of the country with a fishing-wand in his hand, and I like to think that I was the boy who met him that day by Queen Margaret’s burn, where the rowans are, and busked a fly for him, and stood watching, while his lithe figure rose and fell as he cast and hinted back from the crystal waters of Noran-side.
I was sitting at my desk in London when a telegram came announcing that my mother was again dangerously ill, and I seized my hat and hurried to the station. It is not a memory of one night only. A score of times, I am sure, I was called north thus suddenly, and reached our little town trembling, head out at railway-carriage window for a glance at a known face which would answer the question on mine. These illnesses came as regularly as the backend of the year, but were less regular in going, and through them all, by night and by day, I see my sister moving so unwearyingly, so lovingly, though with failing strength, that I bow my head in reverence for her. She was wearing herself done. The doctor advised us to engage a nurse, but the mere word frightened my mother, and we got between her and the door as if the woman was already on the stair. To have a strange woman in my mother’s room—you who are used to them cannot conceive what it meant to us.
Then we must have a servant. This seemed only less horrible. My father turned up his sleeves and clutched the besom. I tossed aside my papers, and was ready to run the errands. He answered the door, I kept the fires going, he gave me a lesson in cooking, I showed him how to make beds, one of us wore an apron. It was not for long. I was led to my desk, the newspaper was put into my father’s hand. ‘But a servant!’ we cried, and would have fallen to again. ‘No servant, comes into this house,’ said my sister quite fiercely, and, oh, but my mother was relieved to hear her! There were many such scenes, a year of them, I daresay, before we yielded.
I cannot say which of us felt it most. In London I was used to servants, and in moments of irritation would ring for them furiously, though doubtless my manner changed as they opened the door. I have even held my own with gentlemen in plush, giving one my hat, another my stick, and a third my coat, and all done with little more trouble than I should have expended in putting the three articles on the chair myself. But this bold deed, and other big things of the kind, I did that I might tell my mother of them afterwards, while I sat on the end of her bed, and her face beamed with astonishment and mirth.
From my earliest days I had seen servants. The manse had a servant, the bank had another; one of their uses was to pounce upon, and carry away in stately manner, certain naughty boys who played with me. The banker did not seem really great to me, but his servant—oh yes. Her boots cheeped all the way down the church aisle; it was common report that she had flesh every day for her dinner; instead of meeting her lover at the pump she walked him into the country, and he returned with wild roses in his buttonhole, his hand up to hide them, and on his face the troubled look of those who know that if they take this lady they must give up drinking from the saucer for evermore. For the lovers were really common men, until she gave them that glance over the shoulder which, I have noticed, is the fatal gift of servants.
According to legend we once had a servant—in my childhood I could show the mark of it on my forehead, and even point her out to other boys, though she was now merely a wife with a house of her own. But even while I boasted I doubted. Reduced to life-size she may have been but a woman who came in to help. I shall say no more about her, lest some one comes forward to prove that she went home at night.
Never shall I forget my first servant. I was eight or nine, in velveteen, diamond socks (‘Cross your legs when they look at you,’ my mother had said, ‘and put your thumb in your pocket and leave the top of your handkerchief showing’), and I had travelled by rail to visit a relative. He had a servant, and as I was to be his guest she must be my servant also for the time being—you may be sure I had got my mother to put this plainly before me ere I set off. My relative met me at the station, but I wasted no time in hoping I found him well. I did not even cross my legs for him, so eager was I to hear whether she was still there. A sister greeted me at the door, but I chafed at having to be kissed; at once I made for the kitchen, where, I knew, they reside, and there she was, and I crossed my legs and put one thumb in my pocket, and the handkerchief was showing. Afterwards I stopped strangers on the highway with an offer to show her to them through the kitchen window, and I doubt not the first letter I ever wrote told my mother what they are like when they are so near that you can put your fingers into them.
But now when we could have servants for ourselves I shrank from the thought. It would not be the same house; we should have to dissemble; I saw myself speaking English the long day through. You only know the shell of a Scot until you have entered his home circle; in his office, in clubs, at social gatherings where you and he seem to be getting on so well he is really a house with all the shutters closed and the door locked. He is not opaque of set purpose, often it is against his will—it is certainly against mine, I try to keep my shutters open and my foot in the door but they will bang to. In many ways my mother was as reticent as myself, though her manners were as gracious as mine were rough (in vain, alas! all the honest oiling of them), and my sister was the most reserved of us all; you might at times see a light through one of my chinks: she was double-shuttered. Now, it seems to be a law of nature that we must show our true selves at some time, and as the Scot must do it at home, and squeeze a day into an hour, what follows is that there he is self-revealing in the superlative degree, the feelings so long dammed up overflow, and thus a Scotch family are probably better acquainted with each other, and more ignorant of the life outside their circle, than any other family in the world. And as knowledge is sympathy, the affection existing between them is almost painful in its intensity; they have not more to give than their neighbours, but it is bestowed upon a few instead of being distributed among many; they are reputed niggardly, but for family affection at least they pay in gold. In this, I believe, we shall find the true explanation why Scotch literature, since long before the days of Burns, has been so often inspired by the domestic hearth, and has treated it with a passionate understanding.
Must a woman come into our house and discover that I was not such a dreary dog as I had the reputation of being? Was I to be seen at last with the veil of dourness lifted? My company voice is so low and unimpressive that my first remark is merely an intimation that I am about to speak (like the whir of the clock before it strikes): must it be revealed that I had another voice, that there was one door I never opened without leaving my reserve on the mat? Ah, that room, must its secrets be disclosed? So joyous they were when my mother was well, no wonder we were merry. Again and again she had been given back to us; it was for the glorious to-day we thanked God; in our hearts we knew and in our prayers confessed that the fill of delight had been given us, whatever might befall. We had not to wait till all was over to know its value; my mother used to say, ‘We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it,’ and there can be few truer sayings, but during her last years we exulted daily in the possession of her as much as we can exult in her memory. No wonder, I say, that we were merry, but we liked to show it to God alone, and to Him only our agony during those many night-alarms, when lights flickered in the house and white faces were round my mother’s bedside. Not for other eyes those long vigils when, night about, we sat watching, nor the awful nights when we stood together, teeth clenched—waiting—it must be now. And it was not then; her hand became cooler, her breathing more easy; she smiled to us. Once more I could work by snatches, and was glad, but what was the result to me compared to the joy of hearing that voice from the other room? There lay all the work I was ever proud of, the rest is but honest craftsmanship done to give her coal and food and softer pillows. My thousand letters that she so carefully preserved, always sleeping with the last beneath the sheet, where one was found when she died—they are the only writing of mine of which I shall ever boast. I would not there had been one less though I could have written an immortal book for it.
How my sister toiled—to prevent a stranger’s getting any footing in the house! And how, with the same object, my mother strove to ‘do for herself’ once more. She pretended that she was always well now, and concealed her ailments so craftily that we had to probe for them:—
‘I think you are not feeling well to-day?’
‘I am perfectly well.’
‘Where is the pain?’
‘I have no pain to speak of.’
‘Is it at your heart?’
‘No.’
‘Is your breathing hurting you?’
‘Not it.’
‘Do you feel those stounds in your head again?’
‘No, no, I tell you there is nothing the matter with me.’
‘Have you a pain in your side?’
‘Really, it’s most provoking I canna put my hand to my side without your thinking I have a pain there.’
‘You have a pain in your side!’
‘I might have a pain in my side.’
‘And you were trying to hide it! Is it very painful?’
‘It’s—it’s no so bad but what I can bear it.’
Which of these two gave in first I cannot tell, though to me fell the duty of persuading them, for whichever she was she rebelled as soon as the other showed signs of yielding, so that sometimes I had two converts in the week but never both on the same day. I would take them separately, and press the one to yield for the sake of the other, but they saw so easily through my artifice. My mother might go bravely to my sister and say, ‘I have been thinking it over, and I believe I would like a servant fine—once we got used to her.’
‘Did he tell you to say that?’ asks my sister sharply.
‘I say it of my own free will.’
‘He put you up to it, I am sure, and he told you not to let on that you did it to lighten my work.’
‘Maybe he did, but I think we should get one.’
‘Not for my sake,’ says my sister obstinately, and then my mother comes ben to me to say delightedly, ‘She winna listen to reason!’
But at last a servant was engaged; we might be said to be at the window, gloomily waiting for her now, and it was with such words as these that we sought to comfort each other and ourselves:—
‘She will go early to her bed.’
‘She needna often be seen upstairs.’
‘We’ll set her to the walking every day.’
‘There will be a many errands for her to run. We’ll tell her to take her time over them.’
‘Three times she shall go to the kirk every Sabbath, and we’ll egg her on to attending the lectures in the hall.’
‘She is sure to have friends in the town. We’ll let her visit them often.’
‘If she dares to come into your room, mother!’
‘Mind this, every one of you, servant or no servant, I fold all the linen mysel.’
‘She shall not get cleaning out the east room.’
‘Nor putting my chest of drawers in order.’
‘Nor tidying up my manuscripts.’
‘I hope she’s a reader, though. You could set her down with a book, and then close the door canny on her.’
And so on. Was ever servant awaited so apprehensively? And then she came—at an anxious time, too, when her worth could be put to the proof at once—and from first to last she was a treasure. I know not what we should have done without her.