That hope was to faint and fall during
the days that followed and saw her quest no nearer its fulfilment.
For who wished to employ the strange, dark girl that had always been
aloof and distrusted? And who could credit this violent conversion to
the ordered ways of domesticity? Who had the money to squander on help
from without, when, within, if there were not enough hands for the work,
then the work itself, like an unanswered letter, slipped into that dead
place of unremembered things where nothing matters any more? Last week's
cleaning left undone adds nothing appreciable to this week's dirt that
next week's exertions may not remedy as easily together as singly--or so
argued the slovenly housewife, while for the industrious no hands save
their own could have scrubbed and polished to their liking.
Here and there Loveday earned a few odd pence, for a few hand's turns
done when necessity or charity called in her vagrant services, but the
Flora Dance of Bugletown was held upon the eighth of May, and when May
Day dawned she had but tenpence for all her store--and the riband would
cost as many shillings. Despair settled in her heart for the first time;
often before it had knocked but been refused more than a glance within,
but now her enfeebled arms could hold the door no longer, and that most
dread of all visitors took possession of his own--for is not the human
heart Despair's only habitation, without which he is but a homeless
wanderer?
CHAPTER IX: IN WHICH LOVEDAY SEES ONE MAGPIE
Chapter IX
IN WHICH LOVEDAY SEES ONE MAGPIE
Upon May Day, when boys blow the May horns and girls carry sprays of
hawthorn and all good folk break their fast on bread and cream, Loveday
had to go, as was her wont (and a mortifying one to her pride since
Primrose's flouting of her), to Upper Farm.
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