Dear heart, but what hath Milly been a-doing! I could not think last night where was my book, but I was rare sleepy, and let it a-be. And here this morrow do I find a good two pages all scribbled o’er of Milly’s writing. Well! ’tis not my fault, so I trust shall not be my blame.
And it is true, as Milly saith, that she is better-favoured than I. As for Anstace, I wis not, only I know and am well assured, that I am least comely of the four. But she should never have writ what she did touching Father’s nose, and if it cost me two pence, that must I say. I do love every bit of Father, right down to the tip of his nose, and I never thought if it were well-favoured or no. ’Tis Father, and that is all for me. And so should it be for Milly,—though it be two pence more to say so.
Selwick Hall, October ye vi.
We had been sat at our sewing a good hour this morrow,—that is, Mother, and Aunt Joyce, and we three maids,—when all at once Milly casts hers down with a sigh fetched from ever so far.
“Weary of sewing, Milly?” saith Mother with a smile.
“Ay—no—not right that, Mother,” quoth she. “But here have I been this hour gone, a-wishing I had been a man, till it seemed me as if I could not abide for to be a woman no longer.”
“The general end of impossible wishes,” saith Mother, laughing a little.
“Well!” quoth Aunt Joyce, a-biting off her thread, “in all my wishing never yet wished I that.”
“Wherefore is it, Milly?” saith Mother.
“Oh, a man has more of his own way than a woman,” Milly makes answer. “And he can make some noise in the world. He is not tied down to stupid humdrum matters, such like as sewing, and cooking, and distilling, and picking of flowers, with a song or twain by now and then to cheer you. A man can preach and fight and write books and make folk listen.”