I bowed my head in silent bitterness. Wishing me joy! what a satire it seemed.
“Are you very busy, Mary?” said Miss Saville. “Now do you think, if Alice had not come to school, and been taught her duty, she would have sat there so quietly helping her mother. I don’t believe anything of the kind.”
“Thank you all the same, Ma’am, it done her a deal of good gwoing to school,” said Mary, with a submissive, yet resolute courtesy, “but she always was a good child.”
“I don’t say she’s a good child now—she’s doing no more than her duty,” said Miss Saville, with a peremptory little nod; “there’s nothing worse for children than to praise them to their faces. There’s that boy of yours, not half an hour ago, if I had not been at hand, he might have broken his neck, clambering into the cart on the edge of the common. I am sure, how these children escape with their lives, with nobody to look after them, is a constant wonder to me.”
“Providence is always a-minding after them,” said Mary, “poor folks’ children is not like rich folks; and my boy can take a knock as well as another—I’m not afraid.”
“Well, now I have something to tell you of,” said Miss Saville.
“Since Mrs. Southcote has come home, she wishes to do good to you all like a Christian lady; and I’m going to take a house, or have one built here at Cottisbourne, and live in it myself, and take care of the old people who are helpless, and a burden on their families. Mrs. Southcote, and other good ladies, will come to help me, and the old folks shall be well taken care of, and have comfortable rooms and beds, and be a burden to nobody. What do you say to that, Granny? Mary has plenty to do with her own family, and I dare say doesn’t always get much time to mind you, and you’d be off her hands, and make her easier in her mind, for I’m sure you know very well how much she’s got to do.”
A shrill hoohoo of feeble, yet vehement sobbing interrupted this speech. “I’m a poor old soul,” said the hysterical voice of Granny; “but I toiled for her and her children, when I had some strength left, and I do what I can in my old days—God help me! My poor bit o’ bread and my tater—a baby ‘ud eat as much as me. Lord help us! you don’t go for to say my own child would grudge me that?”
“Folks had best not meddle with other folks’ business,” said Mary, with an angry glance towards Miss Saville. “You mind your knitting, mother, and don’t mind what strangers say. You ladies is hard-hearted, that’s the truth—though you mean kind—begging your pardon, Ma’am,” she said, with a curtsey to me; “but I work cheerful for my mother—I kneaw I do. I no more grudge her nor I grudge little Polly, by the fire. She’s been a good mother to me, and never spared her trouble; and ne’er a one of the childer but would want their supper sooner than miss Granny from the corner. And for all so feeble as she is, there’s a deal of life in her,” said Mary, once more putting up to her eyes the corner of her apron. “She’ll tell the little uns’ doins, it’s wonderful to hear—and talks out o’ the Bible of Sundays, that the parson himself might be the better—and knits at her stocking all the week through. They kneaws little that says my mother’s a burden. Alice ‘ud break her heart if she hadn’t Granny to do for, every day.”
“Well! I must say I think it very ungrateful of you,” said Miss Saville, “when I undertake she should be well taken care of, and Mrs. Southcote would come to see her almost every day. You’re a thankless set of people in Cottisbourne. You do not know when people try to do you good. There’s old Sally—”