“Me in a picture with a fringe!” she said to herself; “how I do hope as Mother won’t mind!”
That afternoon, when she sat quietly down to her sewing, this great idea weighed heavily upon her. It would be the very first step she had ever taken without her mother’s approval, and away from the influence of Agnetta’s decided opinion it seemed doubly alarming—a desperate and yet an attractive deed.
Now and then for a moment she thought it would be better to tell her mother, but when she looked up at the grave, rather sad face, bent closely over some needlework, she lacked courage to begin. It seemed far removed from such trifles as fringes and fashions; and though, as Lilac knew well, it could have at times a smile full of love upon it, just now its expression was thoughtful, and even stern.
She kept silence, therefore, and stitched away with a mind as busy as her fingers, until it was time to boil the kettle and get the tea ready. This was just done when Mrs Wishing, who lived still farther up the hill, dropped in on her way home from the village.
She was an uncertain, wavering little woman, with no will of her own, and a heavy burden in the shape of a husband, who, during the last few years, had taken to fits of drinking. The widow White acknowledged that she had a good deal to bear from Dan’l, and when times were very bad, often supplied her with food and firing from her own small store. But she did not do so without protest, for in her opinion the fault was not entirely on Dan’l’s side. “Maybe,” she said, “if he found a clean hearth and a tidy bit o’ supper waitin’ at home, he’d stay there oftener. An’ if he worked reg’lar, and didn’t drink his wages, you’d want for nothin’, and be able to put by with only just the two of you to keep. But I can’t see you starve.”
Mrs Wishing fluttered in at the door, and, as she thought probable, was asked to have a dish of tea. Lilac bustled round the kitchen and set everything neatly on the table, while her mother, glancing at her now and then, stood at the window sewing with active fingers.
“Well, you’re always busy, Mrs White,” said the guest plaintively as she untied her bonnet strings. “I will say as you’re a hard worker yourself, whatever you say about other folks.”
“An’ I hope as when the time comes as I can’t work that the Lord ’ull see fit to take me,” said Mrs White shortly.
“Dear, dear, you’ve got no call to say that,” said Mrs Wishing, “you as have got Lilac to look to in your old age. Now, if it was me and Dan’l, with neither chick nor child—” She shook her head mournfully.
Mrs White gave her one sharp glance which meant “and a good thing too”, but she did not say the words aloud; there was something so helpless and incapable about Mrs Wishing, that it was both difficult and useless to be severe with her, for the most cutting speeches could not rouse her from the mild despair into which she had sunk years ago. “I dessay you’re right, but I dunno,” was her only reply to all reproaches and exhortations, and finding this, Mrs White had almost ceased them, except when they were wrung from her by some unusual example of bad management.