Anne often thought that if only Maggie had come from another village she would have made an excellent servant; all her sluttish ways came from her mother’s being just round the corner; she had only to slip down the vicarage garden and through a hole in the hedge to be at home. The cottage was so small, and Mrs. Pattle and her family so large, that Anne thought of the old woman who lived in a shoe whenever she looked at it; though Mrs. Pattle never seemed in any doubt what to do. She knew when to slap a child, and when only to swear at it.
No doubt she was a good mother, resembling very much one of the huge sows which sometimes wandered over the village green in front of her cottage—a sow whose steps were followed by a sounder of little porkers trotting about in all directions. What if she did chastise one, or even gobble it up? One would not be missed.... No, indeed, for how did it come about that Mrs. Pattle had three children that all seemed to be between two and three years old, yet none of them twins? Was one of them Maggie’s? Anne thought not, but it was difficult to be sure, and if the matter were not settled soon she would never know; on such points the Pattles’ memories were not trustworthy. Yes, they were a slipshod family, though not exactly what one would call an immoral one....
Yet, though Anne despised Maggie for her sluttishness and untruthfulness, in some ways she admired her. Maggie was a good girl, she did what she was told, had a passion for washing floors, and was not a bad cook. Then she would go anywhere at any time, and do anything for anybody to oblige. Mrs. Pattle’s cottage was crawling with babies, could one of them be the fruit of this cheery good-nature?
But if Anne admired the way Maggie scrubbed the scullery floor, she felt envy when she saw her sauntering along the lanes with her hands in her pockets, whistling like a ploughboy, and stopping to speak to every person she met on the road. Did she envy Maggie only because she had so many friends, or was it partly because she knew all the boys and the young men, and went in the grove in the evenings, coming out with her cheeks no redder than they were by nature?
Why was it, Anne asked herself, that she could not whistle as she walked along in her long black dress and her black straw hat? She had no friends to talk to except the village people, and she could only visit them if they were ill, or in trouble. That, and watching her father feed the birds, was not enough to fill her life. She read, and when the young carters went ploughing she laid aside her book to watch them as they passed the house, sitting sideways on their great horses. Anne liked the way men whistled, and their deep voices as they spoke to the cart-horses drinking at the pond, voices so full of restraint and kindliness. There was no way for her to speak to these young men who looked so cheerful as they went by to work in their rough clothes, though sometimes, when she was out on a long walk and was far from home, she had tried to get into conversation with a young farmer leaning over a gate, or with a gamekeeper idling along the edge of a wood, his black and white spaniel at his heels.
But the beds had to be made, and since she liked to sleep in a big four-poster that they had found in the vicarage on their arrival, and her father also slept in a large bed, she helped Maggie to turn the mattresses.
It takes two to make a bed properly, and with an unselfish companion who does not take more than her fair share of the sheets to tuck in on her side, it is pleasant work.
How the mattress bends and coils on itself, somersaulting heavily like a whale, and how brave the great linen sheet looks as you turn it down! The last of the two beds was made, and they were tucking in the quilt when a strange sound came from outside the house—a confused noise of voices singing. Was it a hymn?
“Whatever can that be, Maggie?” she asked.
“That’s the carters come, Miss,” the girl answered. “It is Plough Monday to-day.”