There was no fairy mist hanging before her mental vision now. Like Mr. Stewart, she feared the person who could not make money at Berrie Down, plainly and economically as they had lived for years, would not be likely to make or to keep much money elsewhere. Certainly the thousand a year was something tangible—a peg on which to hang her faith, had any faith been left; but, like most women who have passed all the most important years of their lives in the country, Heather entertained a perfect horror of the expenses of living in town.
She did not believe one sentence of what Mr. Black said about an income going as far there as in the country. She knew, no one better, how very small a money outlay had sufficed to maintain the family at Berrie Down comfortably and respectably.
Those only who have eaten of the fat of their own lands, and beheld the wheat growing which is afterwards to be ground into flour—who have scarcely missed from amongst the rough abundance of all farm produce, the poultry and milk, the butter, eggs, hams, vegetables, and meat necessary for the consumption even of a large family—can tell what a very difficult thing it is to cater for an establishment in town, where everything, to the country imagination, seems sold according to its weight in gold—where a housekeeper’s hand is never out of her pocket from one week’s end to another—where it is either bills or cash, but, in any case, ultimately money—where even a few sprigs of parsley, even a bunch of savoury herbs, cannot be procured without purchase, without going through the ceremony of buying that which, at the old home, grew wild, almost, along the sunniest borders—wild, to be had for the mere trouble of gathering.
Of that mongrel country life which exists in the suburbs of great towns, and which has given rise to various sayings concerning home-laid eggs at a shilling a-piece, carrots at half-a-guinea the bunch, butter half-a-crown a pound, and milk eighteen-pence a quart, Heather had no experience. She only knew that her father’s glebe lands and Arthur’s farm had enabled their respective families to make both ends meet, without pinching in the parlour, or an over-strict and painful economy in the kitchen; and she dreaded entering on what was to her an utterly untried career—that of managing a town establishment, and entering every item, from cream to laundry work, in her formerly easily-kept housekeeping book.
All these matters she had discussed, after a woman’s diffuse fashion, with Agnes and Mrs. Piggott; and Agnes and Mrs. Piggott had both agreed that much might still be forwarded from Berrie Down; that it would only be Ned’s time and the pony’s to run over to Palinsbridge with a weekly hamper for town; “and besides, you will be often down yourself, I hope, Heather,” added Agnes; but Heather shook her head.
“The expense,” she said, “will be more than I should like to incur frequently. I am afraid, although a thousand a year sounds a great deal, it will not go very far in London, more especially in the style Arthur talks of living.”
“But his shares, you know, Heather?” suggested Agnes, hopefully.
“Yes, I had forgotten them,” was the reply, evidently intended to be affirmative of the girl’s cheerful views, but failing of its purpose, because Mrs. Dudley’s tone implied that, now she did remember the shares, her spirits were not unduly raised.
She had heard too many revelations from Mrs. Black to be mightily exalted at the idea of being even indirectly connected with a company. That lady had favoured her with too many descriptions of how they had “up and down,” “seeing and sawing,” for Mrs. Dudley’s heart to flutter at the prospect of wealth suddenly spread out before them.
“If it was here to-day, it was gone to-morrow,” Mrs. Black had sadly lamented; “and, while it was here, we had nothing but anxiety; and when it was there, we had a trouble to keep the wolf from the door. I am sure, my dear, what I have gone through would make a history.”