It was opened by a
shrewd-visaged, respectable old woman, and revealed a clean interior,
but very indigent, with the tea-table set, and on a wooden stool by the
hearth a tall, fair young woman sitting, who rose and dropt a smiling
curtsey to Miss Fairfax: she was Alice, the second housemaid at
Abbotsmead, and waited on the white suite. She explained that Mrs. Macky
had given her leave to walk over and see her mother, but she was out at
work; and this was her aunt Jane, retired from service and come to live
at home with her widowed sister.
An old range well polished, an oven that would not bake, and a boiler
that would not hold water,--this was the fireplace. The floor was of
bricks, sunken in waves and broken; through a breach in the roof of the
chamber over the "house" blew the wind and leaked the rain, in spite of
a sack stuffed with straw thrust between the rafters and the tiles.
"Yes, ma'am, my poor sister has lived in this place for sixteen years,
and paid the rent regularly, three pounds a year: I've sent her the
money since she lost her husband," said the retired servant, in reply to
some question of Mrs. Chiverton's. "Blagg is such a miser that he won't
spend a penny on his places; it is promise, promise for ever. And what
can my poor sister do? She dar'n't affront him, for where could she go
if she was turned out of this? There's a dozen would jump at it, houses
is so scarce and not to be had.
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