“I wonder at yer bringin’ yer mouth to speak o’ such things,” said the post-mistress severely. “And if you ask me, I’d ’ave said pitch was best let alone anyways.”
But the humbler Chapel-goer was not daunted.
“Well, I never!” ejaculated she. “And you, a Church-woman! You’d never ’ave ’ad ’er not give Sue a name?”
“For one she give a name to, she’s brought three into the world to own a drunken sot and evil-liver for a father!” sneered Miss Hearn. “’Tis writ the sins o’ the fathers shall be visited on the children. No, no, you take my word for it,” added the lady dictatorially, “the sinful passions o’ man—not to say woman—is the root o’ the whole o’ that there business.”
“I never thought o’ that,” declared the housekeeper, a trifle shaken in her opinion. “Not but what I can’t deny she were dead gone on ’im. But, there, anyways she do ’ave a life on it,” she added irrelevantly; “and I do think ye might give ’er that job o’ work if ye could manage it, ma’am.”
Miss Hearn pursed her lips and moved away to fetch the order which both women had forgotten in the eagerness of their gossip.
This request put her back on the pedestal of her dignity.
“I think o’ the example, ma’am,” she whispered, her eyelids positively quivering with righteousness as she proceeded to her work. “I’ve done more for Mrs. Wood than I should ha’ done a’ready. Many’s the time I’ve overlooked it when she were late with my rent. And yet she earns as good as most, and I didn’t ought to. We must think o’ the deservin’ fust.”
“Well, she ’ave done the best she could for ’er childer ye must allow,” argued the other. “They’s the cleanest and best be’aved children in the village—everybody says so—and allers at school, ’cept Sue, as stays to ’elp ’er mother now. Nobody can’t say but what Lucy Wood ’aven’t toiled for ’em all, and ’alf killed ’erself too! The master told me if ever she was to ’ave another turn same as that she ’ad last winter, she couldn’t get over it no-ways.”
“Folk must lie as they’ve made their beds,” repeated Miss Hearn, pitilessly. “If she ’ad ha’ kep’ ’erself to ’erself she wouldn’t ha’ ’ad no sich turns at all.”