The sound of panting on the stairs, and a sharp blow on the door, caused by its violent contact with the bacon dish, announced the approach of Matilda, the grimy little “general.” She came in, holding a plate surmounted by a rattling dish-cover in one hand, and in the other a tarnished teapot. These she set on the table, incidentally spilling most of the bacon fat as she did so. She then shambled towards the door, where she stood looking back over her shoulder.
“Anythin’ more yer want, Miss?”
“Bread, please, Matilda, and mustard. Oh! and you’ve forgotten the butter again,” Bridget said, a trifle huskily, coming to the table.
“Oh, if you please, Missus says there ain’t no more butter. You ’ad the last with yer tea last night.”
“Why didn’t Mrs. Fowler tell me before? But it doesn’t matter,” Bridget added hastily, beginning to pour out the tea. She bent a little lower over the teapot than was altogether necessary. Matilda closed the door by means of the primitively ingenious fashion of dragging it after her with one foot, the process requiring such a curve of leg as to reveal the gaping holes in her stockings.
Bridget poured some milk out of the cracked jug into her tea, with a shaking hand, and raised the cup half way to her lips. Then she put it down with a sudden rattle into the saucer. Her tears choked her. She pushed away her plate, with the dried-up piece of bacon upon it, rested her elbows on the corner of the table, and covered her face with both hands. For a minute or two her tears fell fast, then she raised herself with a hasty movement, and pushed her hair back from her face impatiently. “What a fool you are to cry like a baby, at your age, because you are dull!” she said to herself. “Did you suppose you were going to have a wildly exciting time as a teacher? You wanted to teach,—at least, you wanted to be independent. Well, you have what you wanted; this is being independent.”
She glanced round the room, at the gilt looking-glass, supported by corpulent cupids, at the marble-topped sideboard, at the rickety table in the corner, draped by a magenta cloth, on which at regular intervals the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Fox’s Book of Martyrs,” and Miss Braddon’s “Vixen” were disposed, and then she broke into a short, bitter laugh.
She drank her tea, and kept her eyes discreetly on her plate, when Matilda re-entered with the bread.
As soon as the table was cleared after her solitary meal she dragged a great pile of exercise-books from the cupboard under the sideboard, and began to correct them, trying to make her mind work with machine-like precision as she erased or underscored words with a red pencil.
By eleven o’clock the last book was finished. Twelve—one—two—still three hours before dinner.