Story 2—Chapter 1.
Buzley’s Court.
“It’s a terr’ble lonesome part from what I hear tell. Miles from the rail, and the house don’t stand as it might be in the village street, but by itself in the fields. Mrs Roy—that’s the Reverend Roy’s wife—was very straight with me about it. ‘If you think, Mrs Lane,’ says she, ‘that your daughter’ll find the place too dull and far away I’d rather you’d say so at once, and I’ll look out for another girl. It’s not at all like London,’ says she, ‘and I make no doubt Biddy will feel strange at first.’”
Mrs Lane wielded a large Britannia metal teapot as she spoke, kept an eye on the sympathetic neighbour sitting opposite at the tea-table, and also contrived to cast a side glance at Biddy, who stood at the fire making toast and listening to the conversation. She had heard her mother say much the same thing a great many times since it had been settled that she was to go to Wavebury and take care of Mrs Roy’s baby, and she was now quite used to hearing that it was a “lonesome” place, though she did not know what it meant. At any rate it must be something impossible to get at Number 6 Buzley’s Court, Whitechapel, where she had lived all the thirteen years of her life. Perhaps she might find it pleasant to be “lonesome,” she thought, and yet her mother always added the word “terr’ble” to it, as if it were a thing generally to be disliked.
Meanwhile the conversation went on:
“And she goes to-morrow, then?” said Mrs Jones. “Now I dessay it’s a fairish long journey by rail?”
“We’ve got all directions wrote out clear, by the Reverend Roy hisself,” answered Mrs Lane proudly. “Biddy, reach me that letter out of the chany jug on the shelf.”
Receiving it, she flattened it carefully out on the table with the palm of her hand before the admiring eyes of Mrs Jones, and, pointing to each word, read out slowly and loudly the directions for Biddy’s journey.