"Very, mum," she assured me with warmth. "I knows how you will take on. No one is never satisfied with anythink in this world. Now here, I would give my very heyes to be a grand lady reclinin' on a couch in a beautiful tea-gown, readin' novels, and drinkin' egg and sherry twice a day."
"You would get very tired of it," I sighed.
"Well, you'll have to have a settled hoccupation, mum—makin' wool mats like the work'us people, though I must say as they don't like it. My uncle says they used to be quite peaceful and happy till them Brabazon ladies came along and taught 'em how to make wool mats and rush baskets. They worried about the patterns of them mats till the old men was drove fairly silly. P'r'aps you could write poetry. You has a bit of a look sometimes of a person—I mean a lady who could write poetry. There was a poet as visited Tompkinses'—a sickly-looking gent with hair like a door-mat and a complexion like leeks which has been boiled without soda. Tompkinses was very proud of knowing him, and the heldest Miss Tompkins used to wear her canary-coloured satin blouse when he came to dinner. When the wine was offered him he always said, 'No, thanks,' in a habstracted way, but when it went round the table again, as wine does, he'd fill a tumbler, and frown at the ceiling, and pretend he didn't know what he was doing."
"And do I look like a leek that has been boiled without soda?" I asked faintly.
"Oh, no, mum," Amelia replied with comforting haste, "not quite so bad yet. You've looked more like a love-lies-bleeding just lately since you had your accident—though the master seems satisfied. Everybody's tastes is different. Love-lies-bleeding is not my fancy. I like something handsome and straight up like a sunflower or pee-ony. Writin' poetry would help to pass the time, and you has some of the tricks this poet had. He'd stand and stare at the moon, when he was in the garden with Miss Tompkins, and mutter to it like someone gone daft. He fairly skeered me; and he'd take on at catchin' sight of a vi'let as though he'd met a cockroach."
"Well?" I asked, trying to see the connection.
"Well, mum, I catched you carryin' on in just the same way in the garden on master's birthday. You was starin' up at the sky at a lark—I was going to the ashpit—and I heard you say softly to yourself, 'Bird, thou never wert.' I couldn't help hearing you, and I wondered whether you thought it was a kitten or a spider."
I laughed, though I didn't want to do so. I was hideously depressed at the thought of that glorious spring morning and now—but Amelia was so very ridiculous.
I watched her dusting, which was vigorous and thorough, and wished she would put Ruth, a picture above the mantelshelf, at a more decorous angle.
"I have been thinking that you won't be able to manage the housework alone without my assistance, Amelia," I observed, when she had finished brandishing the duster about and had stopped squeaking. "We shall have to engage a charwoman to help you a couple of days a week. We can't afford another servant, I am sorry, but a charwoman will be very helpful. Then if I sent all the washing out I think you could manage. Oh, and I will have a window cleaner," I added encouragingly.