"How can they?" I interposed. "You should see Mrs. Bunce's daily attempt to cook me a milk-pudding in an oven that never bakes anything equally on both sides, and sometimes refuses to bake at all. Oh! I never know what or why the poor are supposed to brew, but I do know that they cannot bake in the houses they are obliged to live in."
"My dear," was the reply I received to all this, "you have only yourself to blame for seeking impossibilities in a country cottage, when you might have settled down with your typewriter in the blue room over the library, and had your meals regularly. I do not pity you in the least."
"I do not pity myself," I said. "The person to be pitied is the person who cannot escape, never the person who can."
As I walked back to the cottage that was built on the plan of a dolls' house, I wondered how long it would be before I availed myself of my privilege of escape. When I first became Mrs. Jim Bunce's lodger, a polite fiction existed that I was to dwell apart in the two front rooms, away from the family, a detached and superior position that might have made the writing of books a possibility. Unfortunately, this magnificent isolation had to yield to the force of numbers. There was only a sketchy, ill-fitting door between me and the kitchen, and I shared to some extent in the family joys and sorrows—they were generally sorrows—even when this was closed. More often it gave way before sudden pressure, and burst open to admit a crawling baby, followed by an assortment of small boys, pigs, chickens, puppies, and anything else that was young and undisciplined, brought up tempestuously at the rear by Mrs. Bunce and a broom. The writing of books did not thrive under these conditions, nor in the more strenuous moments that followed when the baby girl, bored and whimpering, had been carried off and set upon the flagstones under my window with nothing more thrilling to engage her attention than a piece of firewood.
The baby for once was not crying when I arrived back at my rooms, a state of grace that was accounted for when I came upon her mother, who was laying my tea, with the baby tucked under one arm.
"She be that okkard I canna keep her quiet another way," was Mrs. Jim's simple explanation of her feat of skill.
It seemed an opportunity to make friends with the greatest disturber of my peace, and I rashly flirted with the baby until it was converted into the firmest of allies. Nothing, as it turned out, could have been more destructive of my future hopes of accomplishing work. If it was difficult to write when the baby cried, it became impossible when the baby laughed. I cannot recommend the game of "peep-bo" to any one who seriously wishes to combine business and recreation, though the baby's mother seemed to regard it habitually from this point of view. I have seen her play "peep-bo" while she mixed puddings, fed pigs or boys, washed clothes, scrubbed floors, buried a dead chicken, or parcelled out the weekly income into its amazing weekly budget. Perhaps she led a less chequered existence during the month I stayed with her; for without acquiring her agility in doing housework with the baby under one arm, I became an expert in distracting the baby's attention from an insistent tooth, and found this far harder work than any job I was ever paid for. I came to the conclusion that one does not know much about hard work until one has lived with somebody whose work is never done and never paid for.
This was particularly impressed upon me one evening, when, having put the children to bed, fed every live thing that clamoured in the thickly populated back yard, cleared away her husband's supper and watched him start for the village club, Mrs. Bunce told me she was going to step across the road to do the week's washing for a sick neighbour. This little act of humanity, mentioned so casually as to divest it of the slightest taint of charity, kept her at the wash-tub till past midnight; and at five the next morning I heard her go downstairs to get her man's breakfast. After that, one felt it would be an immense relief to hear her grumble. She never did; and there were moments when I began to see points in the comfortable theory held by the lady of the manor with regard to the insensibility of "these people."
There was the day, for instance, when the baby, after crying fretfully for two hours, took to battering a saucepan lid with a tin spoon. I had borne its wails with set teeth, but this new and excruciating din took me into the back room, bent on remonstrance. I was met with a beatific smile from Mrs. Jim, who was peeling potatoes at the sink.
"Bless her heart!" she said placidly. "That be the first time as ever she's been quiet this morning!"