"Not I, ma'am. I'd rather scrub floors any day."
"Ah, well, we can't do only what we like, you know. Try to mend this for me. Miss Flo will not sleep long."
She might have slept a little longer, though, if Lina had not bounced into the room, clattering in her thick boots, to get something that she and Edgar wanted. Flora started, and probably hurt herself, for she began to cry piteously.
This occupied Mrs. Eyre, and Lina made off, for she knew very well that she had done wrong. However, she did not escape, for when Flo was quieted, Mrs. Eyre went out into the tiny strip of ground at the back of the house, which she called the garden, and brought in both the children. Edgar was supplied with a box of wooden bricks, with which he made himself happy in a quiet corner, and Lina was placed on a chair with her face to the wall, and kept there for some time.
"I have spoken to you for your heedless, noisy ways very often, Lina. You know that Flo is never to be startled, yet you rush in, making as much noise as a big rough boy."
"I forgot," said Lina; and she cried a little as she sat in punishment.
Foolish Hetty thought that Mrs. Eyre was hard upon the child, but it had been well for her if her mother had taught her to think of what she was doing when she was Lina's age.
Mr. Eyre came home very tired at seven o'clock. He was accountant and book-keeper at Messrs. Miller & Cartwright's great establishment, in the city of which the place where he lived was now a suburb, though it retained its old name of Little Hayes, given when it was a village three or four miles from B—. Tram lines now came to the end of the trim new road, with its red brick terraces, crescents, and villas; but the straggling village street in which the Hardys lived was as yet unchanged. Every year, to Mrs. Eyre's great grief, a new villa or a row of small 'genteel' houses appeared like magic on the pretty bit of common; she feared that before her children were grown up there would be no common left for them to play on.
Mr. Eyre came out of town on the tram-car, and Mrs. Eyre had tea ready in five minutes after he arrived. She had made a little meat pie, and had prepared a green salad that Mr. Eyre said would have made a man eat even if he were not hungry: which, he added, was not his case. Hetty had her tea all by herself in the kitchen, and was young enough to feel quite grand at having her own little teapot. Indeed, she could not feel lonely while she had that sixpence in her pocket.
The remaining days of that week passed uneventfully, until Saturday came. Mrs. Eyre was watchful, and Hetty had no great opportunity of distinguishing herself. She felt very well satisfied with herself, for, as she said, "The first week was nearly over, and she had only broken one plate, and sat down on Mrs. Goodenough's bonnet, which seemed none the worse."