Satisfied with the Vicar’s report, Mrs. Gillison of Thornton Heath engaged Susan in the real and somewhat unusual capacity of “Housemaid and Companion” at a yearly salary of £20, which to a Stockbury girl appeared a tolerable fortune. And it was arranged that Thomas Ash should take his betrothed to London, and deliver her safely at the house of Mrs. Gillison. There was much sorrow in the village of Stockbury, when Susan took her departure for the great metropolis, and her boxes contained many tokens of the affectionate esteem in which she was held by her contemporaries. All thoughts of rivalry were now lost in a universal sentiment of sorrow. It was felt that in losing Miss Copeland, Stockbury was robbed of much of its moral lustre. It is not necessary to enumerate the presents which her friends forced upon her. Most of them had taken the shape of literature, and ranged from the “Dairyman’s Daughter” to the hymnal of the inimitable Watts; from “Baxter’s Saints’ Rest” presented by the Vicar to a highly coloured history of Jack and the Beanstalk, the gift of a small brother. So beloved, respected, and lamented, Susan left her native village proudly escorted by the man who hereafter was to lead her to the altar.
Mrs. Gillison, when she had duly inspected, cross-examined, and examined-in-chief her new “housemaid and companion,” professed herself entirely satisfied; and Susan, who had a fine literary taste of her own, was delighted to find that her duties would be very light and that she would have the coveted leisure in which to improve her mind. Mrs. Gillison was an active, smart little woman, who did her own cooking. There was, moreover, a boy kept on the premises to carry coal, clean boots, and perform other menial offices. Indeed, Susan’s duties were, in the first place, to keep clean the few rooms, of which Lambird Cottage consisted, and to afford to Mrs. Gillison that companionship which is found desirable by widow ladies of a certain age. Mrs. Gillison was not a lady of much education—her husband had been a pork butcher in the Walworth Road—and it was part of Susan’s duty to read to her in the evening the entertaining fictions which she purchased when she took her walks abroad. The old lady was omniverous, but chiefly relished the stirring fictions compiled by the Penny Dreadful authors, and at times had appetite for such boy’s literature as dealt with pirates or robbers, or the wild Indians of the West. Dickens she rated “a low feller,” but she revelled in Ouida, and was particularly partial to the earlier fictions of Bulwer Lytton. Susan Copeland’s excursions into the field of fiction had hitherto gone no further than “Ministering Children,” and other books with a religious purpose. Her mind, therefore, became greatly expanded while reading for her mistress, and she became possessed of many views of life, which were to her at once strange and stimulating.
When Susan had been three months with the widow of the pork butcher her mistress handed her five golden sovereigns, that being the amount of wages then due, and Susan went out to the contiguous village of Croydon to purchase a new bonnet. She had never before purchased a head-dress so fashionable. Her tastes, however, had improved since she left the little village of Stockbury, and she wanted a bonnet which would suit the new style of doing her hair; for, with the consent of her mistress, she no longer wore her hair brushed flat down on the forehead like a Puritan, but adopted the fashionable “fringe” just then, to the eternal shame of English womanhood, coming into vogue. A “housemaid and companion” is a more privileged person than a housemaid, or a companion, and when Susan returned from Croydon with her purchase she walked into Mrs. Gillison’s sitting-room without knocking at the door. Mrs. Gillison was sitting at the table and started when her servant entered—started, then grew pale, then grew red, and then looked down with a shamefaced expression, more like that of a peccant school-girl than that of a grown woman. On the table before her lay a pack of cards with their faces exposed. Mrs. Gillison had, in fact, been discovered in the act of playing “Patience.” It would be ridiculous to assert that the mere act of engaging in this very monotonous and even foolish pursuit is wicked in itself, and should occasion a blush on the cheek of matured innocence. But Susan Copeland had been brought up to consider cards the devil’s plaything, and Mrs. Gillison had often heard her express her opinions on the subject, when she happened upon an allusion to the card-table in any of the novels which she read. Indeed, so great was the confusion of the widow at being discovered in the midst of an occupation which that model Sunday scholar regarded with honest and hearty aversion that not only did she blush, she added to her sin by uttering a deliberate falsehood.
“I—I—was only tellin’ my fortune,” she said in an apologetic tone.
But in the countenance of her maid she saw pictured neither aversion nor reproach, but only awakened interest and active curiosity. She took up a King and an Ace, regarded them carefully, and then said slowly,—
“And so these are real cards?”
Much relieved her mistress answered,—
“Of course. There ain’t much harm in ’em, is there?”
“Not to look at,” replied the cautious handmaiden. “But I suppose the wickedness is in playing with them.”
“Not a bit. There never was a better man than my husband, and me an’ him played cribbage every night of our lives.”