A day or two after Christmas, Ruth was running home from Miss Jones's house, where she had been having a lesson in clear starching from that notable lady, when she was surprised to hear Mrs. Short calling to her, in very dulcet and amiable tones.
"Where are you, ma'am?" inquired Ruth, after looking round in vain.
"In my own kitching, Ruth, and the 'all door is open. You just step here, I want a word with you."
"Oh dear!" thought Ruth, "And I can't venture to talk French to her, like that saucy Ollie. What can she want?"
She found Mrs. Short sitting in a well-padded beehive chair before the kitchen range. A basket at her feet contained various brushes, saucers, and bits of rag, and her face beamed with complacency and self-satisfaction.
"Good-day, Ruth Golong," said she. "I've been thinking how kind Miss Jones is, teaching you so much and having you there so constant; and I feel I ought to help both you and her a bit."
"Yes, ma'am," said Ruth doubtfully.
"Yes, indeed, Ruth; which I am a very notable woman, my dear, and can teach you even better than Miss Jones can, though the gentry do think such a heap of her. My Matthew, that's dead and gone, poor fellow, used to say that for cleanly ways and housekeeping generally, there was not a woman to equal his wife in England; and if not in England, where? For it's not to be thought that amongst poor benighted furriners and sich,—black, some of 'em, I'm told, and copper-coloured others,—would be as nice in them respects as a English woman. So I've made up my mind as it's selfish in me to keep all that knowledge locked up in my own buzzom, and take it, as one may say, out of the world with me when the time comes as I must leave all my little comforts and go to a better place, and therefore I'm going to teach you, Ruth Golong. And as it's best to begin at the beginning, we'll begin by learning to black up the kitching range. I've everything ready; so now, my dear, you begin. Here's a rag, rub the rust off first with ile—this bottle's the ile."
"But, ma'am," said Ruth, "I have learned to do all this, and my dinner is in the oven, and no one is there to look to it; for Mr. Trulock and Ollie are gone for a walk."
"Well, you know, Ruth, there's the comfort of a oven, your dinner is a-cooking all the same and will never miss you. Here, child, take the rag."