Mr. Heavitree's was often called "a model parish," everything in it was so beautifully managed, and so well worked.
His wife lent an active helping hand in all these things; and in addition, she made the training of young girls her especial work. The Parsonage was large, and she had several children. While keeping two or three good old servants, she used to have a succession of young ones, as housemaids and nursemaids, constantly taken in, taught their duties, and passed onward to other places. Those who know the worry of young and untrained maids in a large household, where everything goes like clockwork, will appreciate the self-denial of Mrs. Heavitree in undertaking such a task.
Marigold went to the Parsonage three months after her father's second marriage, remained a year, and came home just about three months before my story begins—came home to a changed household, because of the change in Mrs. Plunkett. In the three months before she left home, all had gone smoothly; but now she found herself in an atmosphere of fretting, of worry and ill-temper, of disorder and carelessness, of all that in a small way could make life hard to bear.
She had heard something of this before, but not much. Mrs. Heavitree had not encouraged perpetual running home; while Plunkett and Narcissus had resolved to say as little as might be.
Now, however, when Marigold was living at home, the transformation became clear, and the new variety tried Marigold greatly.
The contrast between home and Parsonage proved severe. Everything there had been cheery and bright, the whole household in perfect order. Each person had his or her own duties, and was expected to do them well. To pass from such a state of calm regularity, order, and kindliness, to a house where all was mess and muddle, where things were used and set down anywhere to be left unwashed for hours, where a white tablecloth for meals was thought too much trouble, and where not a smile lightened the day's duties, Marigold felt acutely. She had been used to so different a condition, not only in the past year, but during all her life. It was not the smallness or the comparative poverty of home which distressed her, but the lack of order and of prettiness.
Marigold at first threw herself into the breach, so to say, and tried to improve matters. She washed whatever wanted washing, put away whatever was left lying about, scoured and scrubbed, dusted and swept, endeavoured in all ways to bring back the home to its olden state.
There, however, she met with a check. Words of pleasure and of praise spoken by Plunkett to Marigold roused his wife's annoyance. "Why, this is old days over again," he said. "Home hasn't been home since—" and anybody might understand the half-finished sentence.
Mrs. Plunkett began irritably to oppose Marigold from that hour. She did not choose to be interfered with, she said. Marigold no longer found herself free to put straight Mrs. Plunkett's untidinesses; but only to do as she was told. If a soiled utensil were flung down, and left unwashed, there it had to remain. Thus difficulties began and increased. Marigold, who had a quick temper, would speak sharply, and Narcissus would cry, and the household generally would be overshadowed.
