“She gets out, yer see, at Canley station. That’s as far as the rail goes. There she’ll be met and druv over to Wavebury—eight miles, Mrs Roy said.”
“Dear!” exclaimed Mrs Jones, as the letter was folded up again, “what a outlandish place!”
“We’ve worked hard, Biddy and me,” continued Mrs Lane with a glance of pride at her daughter and a little sigh, “to get all her things nice and ready. Two new dark laylock prints I’ve got her.”
“With a spot?” inquired Mrs Jones full of interest.
“No, with a sprig—I always think there’s an air about a laylock print with a sprig. It looks respectable and like service. I don’t hold with them new-patterned bright cottons. Once in the wash-tub, and where are they afterwards? Poor ragged-out things not fit to wear. I remember I had laylock prints when I first went to service as a gal, and there’s bits of them very gowns in the patch-work quilt yonder.”
“Ah!” said Mrs Jones admiringly. Then looking at Biddy’s capable little square figure she added, “You’ll miss her at first a goodish bit at home.”
“If it wasn’t that baby’s out of hand now and runnin’ about I couldn’t let her go, not if it was ever so,” replied Mrs Lane emphatically. “But I shall rub along somehow, and seven pounds a year’s a consideration. Yes, she’s a handy gal, Biddy is, with children. She had ought t’know summat about ’em, for she’s helped to bring six of ’em up. There was Stevie—a deal of trouble we had with him. Always weakly, and cut his teeth in his legs. Never out of arms, that child wasn’t, till he was pretty nigh two year old. I never should a’ reared him if it hadn’t been for Biddy. That I own.”
On the subject of Stevie’s sufferings Mrs Lane had always a great deal to say, and when she paused, less from lack of matter than want of breath, Mrs Jones took up the tale and added experiences of a like nature. Biddy therefore heard no further reference to herself and her prospects, and pursued her own thoughts undisturbed. And she had a great deal to think of, for to-morrow she was going into the world! She would say good-bye to Buzley’s Court and to all the things and people in it she had known and lived with, and turn her face to meet new things and new people. Nothing would be familiar to her in that strange world, not even tea-cups with blue rims like these she was washing up for the last time. Everything new, down to the two lilac prints, made longer than ever before, lying at the bottom of the new black box. It was wonderful to think of, and very confusing to the mind. There would even be a new baby to look after. But when Biddy reached this point she smiled securely, for she had no fears about the baby, though Mrs Roy had looked so doubtfully at her and said that she was small. Small! What had that to do with it? Biddy felt in herself a large capacity for handling babies. Had she not brought Stevie through teething attended with alarming complications? She was not likely to think much of Mrs Roy’s baby after that.
And indeed Biddy was one of those people who seem formed by nature in body and mind on purpose to be nurses. The babies were comfortable in her strong capable arms, and their little woes and troubles were quieted and soothed by her patient placid temper. Then, too, she had, as her mother had said, a great deal of experience, for though she was only thirteen years old now, she had always, ever since she could remember anything, had a baby on her mind. A baby had always been the chief circumstance in her life from the time when she was too small to do anything but keep watch by its cradle, to that when she learnt her lessons for school with a baby in her arms. In her play-hours, when the children of Buzley’s Court gathered to enjoy themselves after their own manner in the summer evenings, Biddy looked on from the door-step—with the baby. By the time baby number one was beginning to stagger about, and seize upon knives and scissors and other dangerous playthings, baby number two—pink and incapable—was ready for Biddy’s closest attention. Life, therefore, without a baby on hand would have seemed to her unnatural and even impossible; and the baby at Wavebury, instead of something to be dreaded, was the only idea her mind rested on with the confidence of long familiarity.
“For babies,” she thought, “are pretty much alike. There’s fat ones and there’s thin ones. The fat ones don’t cry so much, and the thin ones do, and that’s about the only way they differ.”