The old woman puts on the coffee-pot, and tends the fire; the room is soon warm and cosy. The lonely folk are as trusting and kindly as could be. Olga laughs when I make a little jest about the machine. I noted that neither of them asked how much the thing cost, though I had told them it was for sale. They looked on it as hopelessly beyond their reach. But they could still take a delight in seeing it work.
I hinted that Olga really ought to have a machine like that, seeing she'd got the way of it so neatly all at once.
Her mother answered it would have to wait till she'd been out in service for a bit.
Was she going out in service?
Why, yes, she hoped so, anyway. Both her other daughters were in service, and doing well—thank God. Olga would be meeting them at church in the morning.
There was a little cracked mirror hanging on one of the walls, on the other a few cheap prints had been tacked up—pictures of soldiers on horseback and royalties with a great deal of finery. One of these pictures is old and frayed. It is a portrait of the Empress Eugenie, and evidently not a recent purchase. I asked where it had come from.
The good woman did not know. Must be something her husband had bought in his time.
“Did he buy it here?”
More likely 'twould have been at Hersæt, where he had been in service as a young man. Might be thirty years gone now.
I have a little plan in my head already, and say: