"Oh! you like the hills? Excuse my dress. I was half an hour late this morning. When you lose half an hour in this house, you never can pick it up again, try how you may." (I soon discovered that Mrs. Finch was always losing half an hour out of her day, and that she never, by any chance, succeeded in ending it again, as she had just told me.)
"I understand, madam. The cares of a numerous family—"
"Ah! that's just where it is." (This was a favorite phrase with Mrs. Finch). "There's Finch, he gets up in the morning and goes and works in the garden. Then there's the washing of the children; and the dreadful waste that goes on in the kitchen. And Finch, he comes in without any notice, and wants his breakfast. And of course I can't leave the baby. And half an hour does slip away so easily, that how to overtake it again, I do assure you I really don't know." Here the baby began to exhibit symptoms of having taken more maternal nourishment than his infant stomach could comfortably contain. I held the novel, while Mrs. Finch searched for her handkerchief—first in her bedgown pocket; secondly, here, there, and everywhere in the room.
At this interesting moment there was a knock at the door. An elderly woman appeared—who offered a most refreshing contrast to the members of the household with whom I had made acquaintance thus far. She was neatly dressed, and she saluted me with the polite composure of a civilized being.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am. My young lady has only this moment heard of your arrival. Will you be so kind as to follow me?"
I turned to Mrs. Finch. She had found her handkerchief, and had put her overflowing baby to rights again. I respectfully handed back the novel. "Thank you," said Mrs. Finch. "I find novels compose my mind. Do you read novels too? Remind me—and I'll lend you this one to-morrow." I expressed my acknowledgments, and withdrew. At the door, I look round, saluting the lady of the house. Mrs. Finch was promenading the room, with the baby in one hand and the novel in the other, and the dimity bedgown trailing behind her.
We ascended the stairs, and entered a bare white-washed passage, with drab-colored doors in it, leading, as I presumed, into the sleeping chambers of the house.
Every door opened as we passed; children peeped out at me, screamed at me, and banged the door to again. "What family has the present Mrs. Finch?" I asked. The decent elderly woman was obliged to stop, and consider. "Including the baby, ma'am, and two sets of twins, and one seven months' child of deficient intellect—fourteen in all." Hearing this, I began—though I consider priests, kings, and capitalists to be the enemies of the human race—to feel a certain exceptional interest in Reverend Finch. Did he never wish that he had been a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, mercifully forbidden to marry at all? While the question passed through my mind, my guide took out a key, and opened a heavy oaken door at the further end of the passage.
"We are obliged to keep the door locked, ma'am," she explained, "or the children would be in and out of our part of the house all day long."
After my experience of the children, I own I looked at the oaken door with mingled sentiments of gratitude and respect.