What a cloud of steamy heat the room was, with the fire glowing like a red furnace, and five black irons standing up before it; and clothes-baskets full of heaps of whiteness, and horses with vapoury webs of lace and cambric hanging on them; and the three ironing-boards, where smoothness ran along with the irons; and the heaps of folded clothes; and Betsey in her white apron, broad and red in the midst of her maidens!
‘Ha! Harold King! Well, to be sure, you are a stranger! Don’t come nigh that there hoss; it’s Mrs. Parnell’s best pocket-handkerchiefs, real Walencines!’ (she meant Valenciennes.) ‘If you’ll just run up and see Mother, I’ll have it out of the way, and we’ll have a cup of tea.’
‘Thank you, but I—’
‘My! What a smoke ye’re in! Take care, or I shall have ’em all to do over again. Go up to Mother, do, like a good lad.’
‘I can’t, Betsey; I must go home.’
‘Ay! that’s the way. Lads never can sit down sensible and comfortable! it’s all the same—’
‘I wanted,’ said Harold, interrupting her, ‘to ask you to lend me sixpence. Pony’s cast a shoe, and I had to leave her with the smith.’
‘Ay? Who did you leave her with?’
‘The first I came to, up in Wood Street.’
‘Myers. Ye shouldn’t have done that. His wife’s the most stuck-up proud body I ever saw—wears steel petticoats, I’ll answer for it. You should have gone to Charles Shaw.’