On the day of inspection the work done in the course of the year was submitted to our judgment. As a rule the “garments” were laid out on a long table; alternatively they were dealt out to the makers, or to those who were credited with making something. It was our duty to go on “visiting rounds” among the desks; to pick up the hateful things, to look wise; and, if possible, to make an appropriate remark here and there. This was a terrible ordeal; for each girl regarded her work as the most important output of the year, and very few had any suspicion that we lacked knowledge. It happened one day that, while I was thus engaged, my driver got weary of waiting for me in the road with his dogcart, and hailed a little maid coming out of school: “Be the gentleman a-coming?”
“Yes,” she replied, “he’s just a-lookin’ at our sawin.”
The driver was astonished: “What? dew he knaw about sawin, then?”
“I ’xpact,” said the dear child, “he knaw a little about everythink.”
It was a cruel judgment, though kindly meant: if she had said “a very little,” she would (within limits) have accurately described our pretensions; the duodecimo encyclopædia sort.
After one of these ordeals my assistant and I adjourned, in an unusually exhausted state, to “The Crown” for lunch. It was market day, and extra help had been hired to meet the demands of the farmers; so that we were waited upon by a stranger, who began by asking whether one of us had not been at “our school” that morning. We pleaded guilty, jointly and severally.
“My little gel,” she went on to say, “is wonderful put out: she come back cryin’ till she’s sick. ‘The inspector come,’ she say, ‘and pick up my work, and he look at it, ‘Larks,’ he say, ‘here’s a piller-slip;’ and oh, mother, it was my shimmy, as I’d took such pains with:’ and she did cry ever so.”
My assistant behaved shamefully: he declared I was the culprit, and he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. But I was shocked. Not for worlds would I have had it happen: how was I to know that the folded up lump of unbleached calico was a chemise and not a pillow-case? and to this day I repudiate “Lawks” as an expletive. I exhausted myself in apologies, and thereafter I was careful not to betray ignorance.
What is a garment? Clearly a “wearment”; that which one wears. Should it include pillow-cases, towels and dusters? Custom said “Yes,” and the output of pillow-slips—which in their simplicity of shape and manufacture called for no special skill—always seemed to me to be in excess of the possible demand.
In a school maintained by a bountiful Earl I noticed that the schoolroom had become the workroom of the Castle. There was a liberal display of household articles, and, while the third class had sufficed to hem and seam them, it had been found necessary to employ the first class to mark them with coronets. This was bad. Tennyson would certainly have ruled that plain sewing was “more than coronets.” But worse remained behind. The Castle clearly had not realised that the whole collection would be exhibited, and there were other things, which, as Miss Griselda Oldbuck would say, “it does not become a leddy to particulareeze”; which Herodotus might have declared it “unlawful to mention”; and the sight of which would have gorgonized the Rector’s wife, if she had been present. All this “underwear” with the coronetted towels was laid on the table for our inspection. It was very embarrassing. Providentially the Ladies Vere de Vere did not attend the inspection.