Dorothy had tried her best to relieve Letty of half her burthen, and in return had been made a bone of contention between them. Mrs. Barford wanted her to wait entirely upon herself, and was jealous of her doing so much for Letty; and Joe, who endorsed all that his mother did and said, had widened the breach, by admiring Dolly's pretty face, and extolling her superior management.
It was hard to keep the peace between them all.
Dorothy had been so much engrossed by her own troubles, that she had taken little notice of their occasional bickerings; it was only since yesterday that she had imagined that she was in any way the cause of their quarrels,—hitherto she had gone about her work little heeding them. This day in particular, the old lady was cross and hard to please. The baby cried, wanting its mother, and refused to be fed. The younger boys were troublesome, and the day oppressively hot. Dolly was sadly put about, to attend to them all and cook the dinner. It was a relief when Joe and the men came in from work.
"The beef an' cabbage," Joe said, "wor cooked prime." He wished "the missus wud go out every day, an' leave lass to cook the dinner." The ploom dumplings, however, were not so much to his taste.
"Doll," he said, "do you call e'es suetty things ploom dumplins? I see no plooms in 'em. It dew put me in mind o' a story feather used to tell, o' a stingy missus, who made a pudden for the men in harvest, an' put one ploom in ter middle on't; an' while men wor quareling aboot who shu'd ha' the ploom, a wasp flew away wi' it."
A chorus of haw haws, showed how delighted his fellow-clowns were with farmer Joe's story.
Dorothy felt annoyed, though she laughed with the rest.
"I should have made the dumplings with more fruit in them, master, only Letty cautioned me not to be extravagant with the plums."
"I thought as much," returned Mrs. Barford, rather spitefully. "Letty is fond of saving in a small way. Stopping the cask at the spigot, and letting out at the bunghole, as my father used to say. Take it as a general rule, Dorothy, when men work hard to feed them well."
"The old missus for ever," shouted Nat Green, one of the farm servants. "She wor a prime hand at a pudden anyhow."