“A-h-h-h, Mrs. Cross, my dear,” she said, “if there was sich a thing as a bit o’ gratitood in this world, I wouldn’t be left wi’out a creature to do for me at my time o’ life. Childern of my own I have not,” said Mrs. Chaffey, with an air which indicated that the fact was very much to her credit, “but there’s them livin’ now as I’ve been more than a mother to, what have gone and left I in my ancient years—as thankless.”
“Lard, now!” ejaculated her neighbour, much interested; “ye don’t tell I so, Mrs. Chaffey. Somebody what you’ve a-been very good to, I suppose, mum?”
“Good!” echoed Mrs. Chaffey. “Good’s not the word for it, Mrs. Cross. ’Twas my first cousin’s child—a poor little penniless maid what was brought up in a institootion—an orphan, my dear, as hadn’t nobody in the world to look to. Well, when her time was up at the institootion, I come for’ard, and I says, ‘I’ll take her,’ I says; ‘she don’t need to go to service,’ I says. ‘I’m her mother’s cousin,’ I told ’em, ‘and she can come to live wi’ I.’”
“And they were delighted of course,” suggested Mrs. Cross, as she paused impressively.
“No; if you’ll believe me, they fair dathered I wi’ axin’ questions, and wantin’ I to make promises and that. ‘Why didn’t I come and see the maid afore?’ says they, as if ’twas likely, Mrs. Cross, as I’d go trapesin’ off to a institootion to ax arter a maid as was too small to be any good to anybody. Then they did want I to give her wages. Wages to a little bit of a thing as knowed nothin’, and couldn’t do nothin’! ‘No,’ I says, ‘I’ll give her a home,’ I says, ‘and I’ll be a mother to her, and train her same as if she was my own child, but more than that I will not do.’”
“O’ course not,” agreed Mrs. Cross; “lucky enough she was to get sich a good offer, I think.”
“And so you may,” agreed the other solemnly, “and so I did often say to the maid herself. ‘You may think yourself lucky,’ I did say to her often and often; ‘many another,’ I did tell her, ‘’ud put you out on the road when you do behave so voolish. But me! look at the patience I’ve had wi’ you!’ ’Twas a terr’ble voolish maid, Mrs. Cross—she was a bit silly in herself to begin with, and they institootions—Lard, they do never seem to teach a maid a thing as ’ull be a bit o’ use to ’em! She could scrub a stone passage a mile long if she was put to it, but there bain’t no passages in cottages, and she couldn’t so much as peel a potato or wash a cabbage. Well, I did take so much pains wi’ her as a mother could ha’ done—I did make her find out for herself how to hold a knife, no matter how much she did cut herself. ‘Find out,’ I did say; and she did find out. And when grubs come up on the dish wi’ the cabbages, I’d cut off the bits as was nearest to ’em and put ’em on her plate; so she did soon learn, ye see. Sleep! that maid ’ud sleep many an’ many a cold morning arter I’d pulled blankets off her—e-es, there she’d lay so fast as anything, and never take a bit o’ notice till I got a drap o’ cold water—an that didn’t always wake her up all to once. There, she was fair aggravatin’!—when I did get her up at last and get back to bed again, I couldn’t get a wink o’ sleep for thinkin’ on’t.”
“Dear, to be sure! Well now!” commented Mrs. Cross, scratching her elbows appreciatively.
“E-es, indeed,” continued Mrs. Chaffey, warming with her theme. “I did tell her many a time, ‘You’ll come to no good’. Ah, that I did, and she didn’t come to no good neither.”
“Didn’t she though?” queried the other with interest. “Took up with a soldier, very like?”