This woman has not a bad countenance. There is, indeed, no tenderness in it; but there is a sort of hard good-humour. There are quickness and resolution. She talks fluently of herself and her qualifications, and now and then makes a short curtsey. But she takes no notice of any one of Alice's questions.
A silence sometimes follows, during which Alice repeats her interrogatory perhaps twice, with growing indignation, and then the new comer breaks into a totally independent talk, and leaves the young lady wondering at her disciplined impertinence. It was not till her second visit that she enlightened her.
“I did not send for you. You can go!” said Alice.
“I don't like a house that has children in it, they gives a deal o' trouble,” said the woman.
“But I say you may go; you must go, please.”
The woman looked round the room.
“When I was with Mrs. Montgomery, she had five, three girls and two boys; la! there never was five such——”
“Go, this moment, please, I insist on your going; do you hear me, pray?”
But so far from answering, or obeying, this cool intruder continues her harangue before Miss Arden gets half way to the end of her little speech.
“That woman was the greatest fool alive—nothing but spoiling and petting—I could not stand it no longer, so I took Master Tommy by the lug, and pulled him out of the kitchen, the limb, along the passage to the stairs, every inch, and I gave him a slap in the face, the fat young rascal; you could hear all over the house! and didn't he rise the roof! So missus and me, we quarrelled upon it.”