“Yes,” added Morris, “and when I spoke to him about my windows, as got blown in, he said ‘cottages were no end of expense, and we hadn’t treated them so as they would wish to come back nohow.’”
“Think of their bearing malice!” cried Nanny Barton.
“I don’t believe as how they does,” responded the other Nanny. “They have sent the coals and the blankets all the same.”
“Bear malice!” said Mrs Truman, who had just walked up. “No, no. Why, Parson Harford have said over and over again, when he gave a shilling or so or a meat order, to help a poor lady that was ill, that ’twas by madam’s wish.”
“And Governess Thorpe, she has the bag of baby-linen and half a pound of tea for any call,” said Mrs Spurrell.
“But one looks for the friendly word and the time of day,” sighed Betsy Seddon.
“The poor children, they don’t half like their school without the ladies to look in,” said Mrs Truman. “It is quite a job to get them there without Miss Sophy to tell them stories.”
“I can’t get mine to go at all on Sundays,” said Nanny Morris.
“And,” added Betsy Seddon, “I’m right sure my poor Bob would never have ’listed for a soldier if the captain had been at home to make Master Pucklechurch see the rights of things, and not turn him off all on a suddent.”
“Master Pucklechurch, he don’t believe they are never coming back,” said Widow Mole, who had just come that way as an evening walk with her children. “He says little miss, and madam too, have their health so much better out there, that they won’t like to come home. And yet they have made the place like a picture. I was up there to help Sue Pucklechurch clean it up, and ’tis just a pleasure to see all the new outhouses and sheds, as you might live in yourself, and well off too.”