I had satisfied myself that Brother Solomon’s horse was all right, so I now strode up to the house and told Mrs Dodley to spread the table for a visitor, and said that I should want my clean things as I was going away.
“What! for a holiday?” she said.
“No; I’m going away altogether,” I said.
“I know’d it,” she cried angrily; “I know’d it. I always said it would come to that with you mixing yourself up with that bye. A nasty dirty hay-and-straw-sleeping young rascal, as is more like a monkey than a bye. And now you’re to be sent away.”
“Yes,” I said grimly; “now I’m to be sent away.”
She stood frowning at me for a minute, and then took off her dirty apron and put on a clean one, with a good deal of angry snatching.
“I shall just go and give Mr Brownsmith a bit of my mind,” she said. “I won’t have you sent away like that, and all on account of that bye.”
“No, no,” I said. “I’m going away with Mr Brownsmith’s brother, to learn all about hothouses I suppose.”
“Oh, my dear bye!” she exclaimed. “You mustn’t do that. You’ll have to be stoking and poking all night long, and ketch your death o’ cold, and be laid up, and be ill-used, and be away from everybody who cares for you, and and I don’t want you to go.”
The tears began to run down the poor homely-looking woman’s face, and affected me, so that I was obliged to run out, or I should have caught her complaint.