Still I was only twenty-one, and after I'd been at home a bit, the young ladies would have me back to cheer me up, they said. I travelled with them that spring; but when they all went up to London, and Miss Marian was to be married, and the two little ones were all day with the governess, I really couldn't for shame stay on when there was no need of me. So, though with many tears, I came home, and was casting about in my mind what I had best do—mother being hale and hearty, and no call for dress-making of a plain kind in our village—that afternoon, when I stood watching the stranger little gentry and old Larkins's donkey and the dog, as they crossed the common into the firwood.
It was mother's voice that woke me up, so to say.
'Martha,' she called out in her cheery way, 'what's thee doing, child? I'm about tidied up; come and get thy work, and let's sit down a bit comfortable. I don't like to see thee so down-like, and such bright summer weather, though mayhap the very sunshine makes it harder for thee, poor dear.'
And she gave a little sigh, which was a good deal for her, for she was not one as made much talk of feelings and sorrows. It seemed to spirit me up somehow.
'I wasn't like that just now, mother,' I said cheerfully. 'I've been watching some children—gentry—going over the common—three little young ladies and a boy, and Larkins's donkey. They made me think of Miss Charlotte and Miss Marian when first I went there, though plainer dressed a good deal than our young ladies were. But real gentry, I should say.'
'And you'd say right,' mother answered. 'They are lodging at Widow Nutfold's, quite a party of them. Their father's Sir——; dear, dear, I've forgot the name, but he's a barrowknight, and the family's name is Penrose. They come from somewhere far off, near by the sea—quite furrin parts, I take it.'
'Not out of England, you don't mean, do you?' I asked. For mother, of course, kept all her old country talk, while I, with having been so many years with Miss Marian and her sisters, and treated more like a friend than a servant, and great pains taken with my reading and writing, had come to speak less old-fashioned, so to say, and to give the proper meaning to my words. 'Foreign parts really means out of this country, where they talk French or Italian, you know, mother.'
But mother only shook her head.
'Nay,' she said, 'I mean what I say. Furrin parts is furrin parts. I wouldn't say as they come from where the folks is nigger blacks, or from old Boney's country neither, as they used to frighten us about when I was a child. But these gentry come from furrin parts. Why, I had it from Sarah Nutfold's own lips, last Saturday as never was, at Brayling market, and old neighbours of forty years; it's not sense to think she'd go for to deceive me.'
Mother was just a little offended, I could see, and I thought to myself I must take care of seeming to set her right.