“Well, I want some linsey for mine. Go you on, and when you’ve made an end I’ll ask good Master Clere to show me some, without Mistress Clere’s at liberty sooner.”
Alice Mount was soon satisfied. She bought ten yards of the brown kersey, with some black buckram to line it, and then, as those will who have time to spare, and not much to occupy their thoughts, she turned her attention to helping Margaret Thurston to choose her gown. But it was soon seen that Margaret was not an easy woman to satisfy. She would have striped linsey; no, she wouldn’t, she would have a self colour; no, she wouldn’t, she would have a little pattern; lastly, she did not know which to have! What did Master Clere think? or what would Alice recommend her?
Master Clere calmly declined to think anything about it.
“Take it or leave it,” said he. “You’ll have to do one or t’other. Might as well do it first as last.”
Margaret turned from one piece to another with a hopelessly perplexed face. There were three lying before her; a plain brown, a very dark green with a pretty little pattern, and a delicate grey, striped with a darker shade of the same colour.
“Brown’s usefullest, maybe,” said she in an uncertain tone. “Green’s none so bad, though. And that grey’s proper pretty—it is a gentlewoman’s gown. I’d like that grey.”
The grey was undoubtedly ladylike, but it was only fit for a lady, not for a working man’s wife who had cooking and cleaning to do. A week of such work would ruin it past repair.
“You have the brown, neighbour,” said Alice. “It’s not the prettiest, maybe, but it ’ll look the best when it’s been used a while. That grey ’ll never stand nought; and the green, though it’s better, ’ll not wear even to the brown. You have the brown now.”
Still Margaret was undecided. She appealed to Mrs Clere.
“Why, look you,” responded that talkative lady, “if you have yonder green gown, you can don it of an even when your master comes home from work, and he’ll be main pleased to see you a-sitting in the cottage door with your bit o’ needlework, in a pretty green gown.”