“Oh, don’t you trouble about that, m’m,” she assured me, “anything will do for me. Just what you are having yourselves, m’m. A bit of bread is all I need. I always say so long as we ’ave bread we’ve no need to complain. It’s a pity you don’t ’appen to have a better drying ground, isn’t it, m’m? You could do with a nice field. Always seems to make the things sweeter to my mind with plenty o’ fresh air; but, bless you, I can manage. I’ll give them an extra rub and they’ll look every bit as well. I’m accustomed to make things do as best I can, with me ’usband being an invalid. I was a splendid cook at one time, used to cook every bit of what ’e ’ad, I did indeed, and wash too—washed everything for the children—and in me last place we ’ad everything to do, the table-cloths, and the sheets, and the——”
The washhouse was full of steam, so she did not notice my escape. Through the open window I could hear that she supposed me to be still with her. Presently there was an abrupt pause and the hymn began again.
I told Ruth next morning that I thought she had misjudged Mrs. Muff; she seemed a good-natured old lady, and used to putting up with things. I was informed that she had carried on something dreadful that morning, wanting three courses for breakfast, besides jam and coffee; said tea wasn’t fit stuff to begin the day on, there was nothing strengthening about it. “And she’s calling the soap for everything,” Ruth added; “says she can’t wash with it, and there is no place to dry the clothes—perhaps you wouldn’t mind speaking to her.”
She was out on the back lawn this time hanging out the clothes. Some eccentric flannel garments flaunted defiance, with one leg in the air, and Mrs. Muff sang:
“At the sign of triumph
Satan’s host doth flee——”
“Certainly it does,” I said to myself, and turning up my sleeves I walked out.
“Mrs. Muff,” I began, “what is all this again about breakfast and soap?”
Mrs. Muff in tears was worse than anything I had imagined to be possible. The only thought that enabled me to proceed was that Ruth in tears would be less harrowing but far more terrible. As usual, pity was conquered by fear, and I saw myself as an egg-thirsty tyrant standing (with Ruth behind me) belabouring the prostrate body of poor musical Mrs. Muff with a bar of Gossage’s Tallow Crown. Neither “Primrose Glory” (I think that was the name of her soap) nor fried fish were ever mentioned between us again. Ruth generously added half a cold pie to the peace contract, and I contributed a blue serge suit dear to James’s heart. It is always satisfactory to work in minor interests with great ones and to combine generosity with one’s own advantage.
Imagination is sometimes thought to belong to a high order of intelligence. I believe it often depends upon absence of education. A great mind may so use its education that it only provides a wider field for the imagination, just as the marvellous digestion of a goat can adapt all sorts of inedible stuff to a useful end, but it is difficult to improve on the brilliant fancy of quite ordinary children and illiterate old ladies. If Mrs. Muff had had a normally adult intelligence or the least smattering of science, she would never have expected me to believe that the numerous handkerchiefs that got lost in the wash had gone down the grid. We lost six in one week and ten in the next, and still the water flowed peacefully away, nor ever tarried for a moment round Mrs. Muff’s ill-protected roots. I gave orders that if she would make such a mess she must stand on a foot-stool, which she reluctantly did; but if her explanation about the grid had contained a tenth part of fact she would have been standing knee-deep in a lake in no time. If Mrs. Muff had not been so deaf I should have told her some of the explanations that I have heard children give for natural phenomena, and asked whether they seemed to her at all remarkable. A nice child of my acquaintance, who invariably comes to dinner with dirty finger-nails, has given me quite a lot of imaginative pleasure. Once (she was reproved and sent back each time) it was the cold weather that had made them black; another day—the next, I believe—it was the thunder; the last time I went there to lunch it was because she had been hanging down her hands, and her mother commented upon the curious fact that the week before it had been because she was reaching up to do her hair. I myself have been told that the plates were sooty because the plumber was in the house, that the fresh eggs were bad because of the time of year, and I have waited to complete my collection of “facts that every housewife ought to know,” until I am assured that the cat has had an unusual number of kittens on account of the range.