On the afternoons of Tuesdays and Wednesdays, she hoped to help in some
house with the cleaning, or in some slattern's abode with the weekly
wash, for, as all know, there are some such sluts that the washing gets
put off from day to day, till Saturday finds it still cluttering the
washhouse instead of being brought in clean and sweet from the
gorse-bushes.
Then there were always odd things to be done, such as running errands,
at which she hoped to earn some pence here and there. The white riband
seemed no impossible fantasy to Loveday when she started on her quest.
She went first to visit old Mrs. Lear, at Upper Farm, for no one had
shown such a kindly front to the girl in all the village as she. Loveday
started out for the milk half-an-hour earlier than was her wont so that
she might have time to discuss her hopes with the farmer's wife, and
this time she did not meet young Mrs. Lear or her friend Cherry on the
way. But she did come upon both Mrs. Lears in the big kitchen, the
younger seated in the armchair in front of the fire and the elder
anxiously regarding her. Primrose had been fretful ever since hearing
from her mother-in-law of Miss Le Pettit's visit of the day before,
and of the unaccountable interest the heiress had shown in that faggot
of a Loveday, and by now her fretfulness had assumed the size of an
indisposition. In vain did Mrs. Lear try and cosset and comfort her with
potions both hot and cool; Primrose knew well that beneath the kindness
of the farmer's wife lurked the feeling that it was not for one in her
station to indulge in such vapours as might well befit the gentry, and
that she would be cured sooner by taking a broom to the best carpet than
by sitting and keeping the fire warm.
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