A little maid E-Book

Amy le Feuvre

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 191

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

SHE sat on a doorstep in Bone Alley. Her surroundings were such as you may see any day in that part of London, which is known to the upper class as the Slums. And she herself was not a striking feature in her landscape. Nine out of ten people would have passed her by, without a look or thought. She was dressed in a brown skirt, a black bodice, and a faded blue felt hat, with a wisp of black ribbon and a ragged crow's feather stuck jauntily in on one side. Her arms were hugging her knees, and two very dilapidated old boots rested themselves contentedly on a medley of orange-peel, broken bottles, and old tins. Her eyes were big and blue, her hair a nondescript brown, hanging in straight wisps round her small pinched face. But she was a dreamer.

Leseprobe

A LITTLE MAID

BY

AMY LE FEUVRE

Contents

I. "THE FIRST STEP TO SERVICE"

II. "IN SERVICE TO MY AUNT"

III. "I'M READY FOR MY PLACE"

IV. COUNTRY MUD

V. "TOO FAITHFUL"

VI. A "HEATHEN STOCKING"

VII. "A FELLOW-GIRL"

VIII. "A REAL LITTLE HOME MISSIONARY"

IX. "I'M A-GOIN' BACK TO LONDON"

X. "A SICK CAPTAIN!"

XI. "A LITTLE TRUMP!"

XII. VISITORS

XIII. THE COLLECTION

A Little Maid

CHAPTER I

"THE FIRST STEP TO SERVICE"

SHE sat on a doorstep in Bone Alley. Her surroundings were such as you may see any day in that part of London, which is known to the upper class as the Slums. And she herself was not a striking feature in her landscape. Nine out of ten people would have passed her by, without a look or thought.

She was dressed in a brown skirt, a black bodice, and a faded blue felt hat, with a wisp of black ribbon and a ragged crow's feather stuck jauntily in on one side. Her arms were hugging her knees, and two very dilapidated old boots rested themselves contentedly on a medley of orange-peel, broken bottles, and old tins. Her eyes were big and blue, her hair a nondescript brown, hanging in straight wisps round her small pinched face. But she was a dreamer.

A close observer would have seen that her soul was far away from her surroundings. A rapt smile crossed her face, and a light came into her eyes that nothing in Bone Alley would draw there. Then she gave her thin shoulders a little shake, and frowned.

"Peggy, you're gettin' up too high; come down!"

She was accustomed to talk to herself. There was no one near her. Further down, a barrel-organ was surrounded by a circle of dancing children.

"You'd best be movin', Peg," she continued. "Aunt will be callin' yer."

Slowly she got up, and then, with a little stretch of her long thin limbs, she shuffled up a steep staircase through an open doorway. Up, up, up! Three long flights of stairs. Different smells issued from the many doors she passed, and one could pretty well guess from them the employments of the occupants within—soapsuds, cabbage, fried bacon, and fried fish. Nearly every one at this time seemed to be cooking, for it was one o'clock, and dinners were about to be served.

At the very top floor Peggy paused. Not for breath, for her lungs and heart were sound; but her words explained it.

"Now, Peg, don't you say nothink at all when she rows yer—nothink, or you won't get out agen!"

She opened the door abruptly. It was a poor-looking room, but clean and tidy. A bed near the window contained a cripple woman, who was knitting away busily. She looked round at the child with a heavy frown, and her voice had a peevish nagging note in it.

"How much longer am I to wait for yer, I'd like ter know? Look at the fire, you lazy baggage! You be no more use to me since yer left school than you were before. What 'ave you been a-doin'? Me, slavin' and knittin' myself silly to give you food and clothes, and you out in the streets from morn to night! Dancin' round that organ, I'll be bound! Oh, if I were given the use of my legs agen, wouldn't I make you dance to a different toon!"

Peggy said nothing, but with a clatter and bustle she made up the fire, and then prepared the midday meal. Potatoes and half a herring, with a cup of tea, formed their dinner. Mrs. Perkins kept up a running stream of complaints and abuse, which Peggy hardly seemed to hear. She washed up, tidied the hearth, fetched her aunt some more wool from a drawer, and then slipped away towards the door.

"Where are you goin'?" demanded Mrs. Perkins. "I'll be wantin' you to take a parcel for me to the shop, an' Mrs. Jones have bin in to arsk yer to mind her baby. She have to go to 'orspital for her eye-dressin'!"

"I'll mind her baby now," said Peggy cheerfully, "and then I'll be ready for yer parcel!"

She ran down the stairs unheeding the remainder of her aunt's talk. On the next floor she met a stout woman, just opening her mouth for a call.

"I'm a-comin', Mrs. Jones. Was you wantin' me? Where's h'Arthur? Shall I take him out?"

Arthur was a big heavy boy of two years, but Peggy lifted him in her arms and staggered down the stairs bravely. Once in the street, she put him down on his feet.

"We'll come and see Mrs. Creek," she said. "I'm a-longin' to have a talk with 'er!"

Arthur gurgled assent, and stumbled along contentedly by her side.

She marched down the alley, then turned a corner into a more respectable street, presently paused before a tiny sweet-shop.

It was a clean little place; and behind the small-counter sat a cheery-faced little woman with spectacles on her nose and a work-basket by her side. How Mrs. Creek could live and thrive in such a neighbourhood was a mystery to many. The children loved her almost as well as her sweets. She had no belongings, but eked out her scanty living by mending and making for some of her bettermost neighbours. A card in her window asserted—

"PLAIN SEWING TAKEN IN."

But Mrs. Creek's needle was required for many varieties, from piecing a small corduroy breeches to trimming a bonnet; and darning stockings was her relaxation. She and Peggy were the greatest friends. She knew, though the cripple aunt was a respectable hard-working woman, she was a harsh task-mistress. Peggy waited on her aunt hand and foot, and never got a bright, pleasant word from her.

"Please 'm," began Peggy, dragging her small charge into the shop, "I'll have a halfpenny barley-stick for h'Arthur. And, please 'm, will you tell me once agen how you first went to service."

"Bless your little heart! Sit ye down, child, on that there empty box. And there's the barley-stick. Why, what a fine boy he is growing!"

Then she shook her head reprovingly at Peggy.

"You've no right to be longin' after forbidden things, dearie. Your aunt can't spare you, an' she have told you so."

"Yes," said Peggy, with eager eyes, and a little flush on her sallow cheeks; "but I dreams and dreams of it. An' it may come one day. Teacher told me on Sunday we can arsk God anythink, and—and I'm a—arskin' of Him to manage it for me. Tell me agen of your clo's, Mrs. Creek. They do sound lovely."

Mrs. Creek gave a little low laugh.

"I minds that I thought 'em so. 'Twas nursery maid at the Rectory I went to, and I couldn't sleep at night for thinkin' on it. I had two lilac print gowns, with sprigs of daisies over 'em, and four white aprons, and two pair of home-knitted stockings, and one pair o' new boots, and a pair of low-heeled slippers, and three white caps, and a black straw hat with ribbon, and a white straw bonnet for Sundays, and a grey linsey gown, and a neat black coat—"

She paused for breath, and Peggy gave a rapt sigh.

"Oh," she said, clasping her hands, "how rich yer mother must 'ave been! How lovely to feel they was all yours! Go on, 'm, please. Tell 'ow you felt when you treaded on carpets!"

"They was lovely and soft," the old woman said meditatively; "an' the nursery with its big fire and bright brass fender, an' the pictures and toys, an' the red-cushioned rockin'-cheer, I seem as I can see it all now. The nurse were tall and stern, but the little ladies, there were three on 'em, they were always ready for a game with me. And I used to swing 'em on the lawn, and help 'em to clean out their rabbit hutches. Dear life! What a happy little maid I was!"

Peggy gulped down a sob.

Mrs. Creek looked at her and saw that tears were running down her cheeks.

"It seems like 'eaven," she murmured, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand and hoisting Arthur on her lap, as the little urchin was getting restless. "How little could you go out to service with, 'm, please? If you was ever so careful, wouldn't one print dress be enough? You could wash it out careful when you went to bed—leastways, any dirty patches you could."

Mrs. Creek shook her head.

"If you goes to ladies' service you must 'ave an outfit," she remarked importantly.

"Like as if you were goin' to marry!" said Peggy, with another big sigh.

"But," said Mrs. Creek, "'tisn't many got such a chance as I had. I was country-born, ye see, an' my father were under-gardener at the Hall."

Peggy's face became gloomy.

"Tis no use hopin', is it? I 'ave saved up some pence, 'm. Just what I've earned proper, but see—'ow many before I could get a gown? Why, hundreds, wouldn't it be?"

She produced out of the bosom of her shabby bodice a dirty-looking piece of rag; unknotting it carefully, she counted out sevenpence halfpenny.

Mrs. Creek nodded and smiled.

"That's a beginnin', dearie. Maybe by the time yer aunt will be wantin' yer no longer, you'll have a goodish sum."

Peggy brightened up.

"And 'ow did you stick your caps on, please 'm? Did you have longer hair than mine?"

"Well, yes, I think I had a fine lot in those days, and I plaited it neatly and had a nice flat cap, not one o' these cockatoo sort o' arrangements that girls wear nowadays."

"And tell me now about the rooms, please 'm!"

Mrs. Creek began her descriptions, that had already been given to Peggy many and many a time before; but the child listened with open mouth and eyes, until small customers began to crowd in. It was Saturday, and fathers had come home from their work with pence to spare. Mrs. Creek had to put aside her reminiscences for the time, and, after waiting a little longer, Peggy reluctantly departed with her charge.

A sharp-faced girl soon joined her outside.

"'Ulloo, Peg! H'aint seen you for years."

"Where have you bin?" demanded Peggy.

"I've j'ined the boot factory, and, I say! H'our Emma has gone to be a slavey!"

"Has she? Where? I wish I could!"

"You be a pair o' sillies, the two on yer! Catch me bein' a slavey! No, not I!"

"Where has Emma gone?"

"To the pork-butcher's. An' her missis hit 'er with a bootbrush las' Saturday. I'd like to have had that done to me!"

"When I goes to service," Peggy said loftily; "I shall go out to real ladies, who don't keep no shops."

"I'd start with Buckingham Palace," said the factory girl witheringly; "but p'raps that wouldn't be 'igh enough for yer!"

Peggy promptly parted company with her. She turned into a broad street with her little charge, and sauntered past lines of shops, occasionally pointing out some desirable objects to him, but for the most part pursuing her thoughts in silence. At last a smart draper's brought her to a standstill. Peggy often amused herself by pretending she had come out with a full purse to buy an outfit for service. Now she could not resist playing at the same old game.

"Now, Peggy, take your choice. There are prints there, pink and blue, but no dark lilac like Mrs. Creek had. But that's a pretty stripe over in the corner. You'd look fine in that. And oh my! What cheap caps, with real broidery round 'em, and only twopence three farthings each!"

She paused, and looked at the caps longingly.

"If I could try 'em on, just to see how I looked, and if I could pin it on proper! Why shouldn't I buy one? There now! Come on, h'Arthur, and I'll do it, this very minit!"

Into the shop she went with the air of a duchess. If there was anything that Peggy loved, it was shopping. "Tis the only time folks is civil," she would say. "They don't bawl at me, nor yet scold then, and it makes me feel as if I'm a bigger person than them!"

"I wish to see some of them there caps, please," she said, taking a seat at the counter, with her chin well tilted up. "Caps for service I want."

"Certainly," said a young woman politely, "here are a cheap lot just come in."

"I hope they washes," Peggy said, up one on the tip of her finger. "Sweepin' rooms do make one's caps so dirty," she added, with a knowing shake of her head.

"Oh, they wash right enough," was the reply; "see here, catch hold of this string, undo it, and they come out flat! There you are!"

Peggy gazed at the cap, trying hard to conceal her surprise.

"'Tis like a Jack-in-the-box!" she said to herself; then aloud—

"I'll take one, please, and try how I like it. I'm rather partic'lar as to caps."

The young woman tried to conceal a smile, but she wrapped the purchase up into a small parcel, and Peggy departed in great spirits.

"'Tis the first step to service," she said; "but I don't know where I can try it on. Aunt has the only looking-glass. And I don't like tellin' to Mrs. Creek; she'd think it silly!"

She went home with Arthur, then climbed the steep stairs again. She crammed the cap into the pocket of her dress, then went in and was met with her aunt's usual greeting—

"Wherever have you been, you good-for-nothin' girl? And my parcel ready and waitin' this last hour, and the fire nearly out, and the kettle not near boiling!"

"I've been out with h'Arthur. I'll make up the fire in a second!"

She was not much longer, and then, a few minutes later, sallied out to take her aunt's knitting to one of the City shops. Mrs. Perkins warned her not to be out long, and Peggy sped along the busy streets, racking her brains as to how and where she could try on her untidy little head the stiff snow-white cap that she had bought.

The parcel was delivered, and she received two shillings in payment, which she carefully tied in a corner of a red handkerchief round her throat. Then she retraced her steps homewards.

On the way her eyes lighted on a heavily laden dust-cart in front of her. Something glittered among some rotten cabbages. Peggy's eyes were sharp. She saw that it was a piece of broken looking-glass.

"The very thing for you, Peggy," said she. "Now if you gets that, you'll be in luck indeed!"

She approached the dustman with all the assurance of a London child.

"Hi, mister, jest shy me that piece of glass! I wants it badly."

The man looked at her and it. Then he laughed. "It'll show you no beauty," he said, with a chuckle.

"No," said Peggy seriously, "but it'll keep my hats and bonnets straight on my 'ead."

He came to a standstill. Then with his shovel, he drew out the piece of glass and presented it to her.

Peggy was profuse in her thanks. She hid it under her jacket, and got home in such haste that even her aunt had little fault to find with her.

It was Sunday. She was up early, for she had a lot to do before she was at liberty to go out, and Peggy attended a Sunday School close by, and always went to church on Sunday morning. After that, she stayed in with her aunt for the rest of the day.

Sunday afternoon was the time for Mrs. Perkins' visitors to come and see her. Sometimes it was a neighbour who dropped in for a chat; sometimes a married niece; but there was always a cup of tea going if nothing more, and Peggy waited on everybody and listened to the talk with interest, though she was never supposed to speak.

She went off to Sunday School this morning in a happy frame of mind. Possibilities of a good place always seemed to centre in Miss Gregory, her teacher; and Peggy had made up many wonderful stories about this young lady. How one Sunday morning she would come to school and say,—

"Peggy, I have for a long time thought you would make me a good little servant. Now I am sure of it. I will come round and talk to your aunt, and I will buy you some clothes and next week you shall come to me."

Sometimes Peggy's fancies took a still higher flight. Miss Gregory would say,—

"Peggy, I am buying a house in the country. It is a Rectory, and I have bought the church with it. It has a beautiful garden, and flowers and fruit; you must come with me and be my servant."

I am afraid Peggy's thoughts were often far away from her lessons. She secretly adored her teacher; but if I were to tell the real truth, Miss Gregory looked upon her as a quiet dull little scholar, who was less attentive than many others, and who seemed the most uninterested of them all.

But to-day the lesson attracted Peggy from the very first. It was about the little captive maid who told Naaman's wife of the great prophet who could cure her master. She listened with big eyes and open mouth to the story.

Miss Gregory wound up with—

"And so you see, children, what a lot of good a little servant-maid can do. She had been taken away from her home and friends, and might have been fretful and sulky, and unwilling to help her master. Instead of that, she longed to tell him how he could be cured."

"Should think so," gasped Peggy; "she must have been awful glad to leave 'ome, and go to service!"

There was something in her intense tone that made Miss Gregory look at her. But she felt she needed rebuke.

"No little girl ought to like leaving her parents and going away from them. Good little girls would not like it."

Peggy hung her head abashed. Her next neighbour nudged her sharply with her elbow.

"One for you, Peg!" she whispered.

Peggy gave her a vicious kick, which brought upon her a severer rebuke still from Miss Gregory, and when the class was over and the children dispersing, Peggy was kept behind.

"Don't you ever wish to love Jesus, Peggy, and please Him?" her teacher asked rather sadly.

Peggy looked upon the ground and said nothing.

Miss Gregory went on, "I have often wished you took a greater interest in the Bible, Peggy. You always seem to be thinking of other things. Don't you like hearing Bible stories?"

"About servant-maids I does," said Peggy, looking up with a bright light in her eyes.

"You like that, do you? Why? You are not in service yet, are you?"

"No, teacher. I live with aunt, and does for her."

"Then you ought to be a happy little girl to have a comfortable home, and not have to go out and earn your own living. Maids-of-all work have a miserable time; you need not wish to be one of them."

"But I wants to get into a good place with real nice ladies!" said Peggy earnestly.

Miss Gregory shook her head.

"You would have a lot to learn before you could do that."

"But the girl in the Bible went right into a lovely place. You said her mistress was great and rich. I'd like to wait on a lady like that!"

Miss Gregory smiled, as she noted Peggy's downtrodden aspect.

"Well," she said, "perhaps one day you'll go into service, and if it is a shop, you can serve God as well there as in a palace. Don't wait for great things, but be faithful in small. Now follow the others into church. I am coming."

Peggy's hopes were again dashed to the ground.

"'Tis no good, Peggy," she murmured to herself. "Teacher won't never help yer. She thinks you too bad."

She went to church, and when she bent her head in prayer before the service began, this was her petition—

"Oh God! You'll understand, if she don't. And please find me a place as good as that there leper capting's, and send me clothes, and let aunt let me go. For Jesus Christ's sake, Amen."

Then she lifted her head with bright hope shining in her eyes.

"God 'll do it better than teacher. He's sure to have heard me to-day, 'cause it's in church."

She went home comforted, and through the whole of that day, her busy brain was thinking over the story of the little captive maid.

"I'd like to do somethin' grand like that. In the first place I gets, I'll try. I'll go to a place where there's a ill gent, and I'll tell him—I'll tell him of them there pills that cured aunt's cousin, and if he'll try 'em and get well, 'twould be grand for me. O' course, 'twouldn't be like tellin' him of a prophet, but teacher says there's no prophets now. But it's easy to do grand things in service. If I never gets a place, it's no good thinkin' of 'em."

And so with alternate hopes and fears, Sunday wore away. Not once did she got chance of looking at her precious cap, but the knowledge of her possession was joy to her.

CHAPTER II

"IN SERVICE TO MY AUNT"

EARLY the next morning she woke, and hearing by her aunt's heavy breathing that she was sound asleep, she cautiously sat up in her little iron bed.

She would like to have drawn aside the old curtain from the window, but she dared not cross the floor.

Her aunt was a light sleeper, and her only chance of an uninterrupted time was whilst Mrs. Perkins was unconscious of her presence.

So, as quickly as she could, she propped up her bit of glass against the wall, and proceeded to array herself in her cap. It was rather a difficult process. First her hair had to be rolled up in a little knob, and it was too short to be tractable. Ends kept sticking out, and then nothing would induce the cap to keep in its rightful position. She pinned it here, and she pinned it there, and each time got it more crooked. But patience and perseverance at last won the day, and Peggy surveyed herself with rapture.

"Yes," she said aloud, with a pleased nod at her reflection. "You look a first-rate servant, Peg. Quite a proper one, and you could open the door to a dook quite nice. 'Come in, sir, please. Glad to see you, sir. Will tell my missus you're here, sir. Yes.' Oh lor!"

Her head was tossed so high, that off flew her cap, and a querulous voice broke in upon her make-believe.

"Now what on earth are you doin' of, Peg? Are you going crazy? What are you a-dressin up for, at this time o' mornin'?"

Peggy's cheeks turned crimson. She scrambled into bed.

"Are you crazed?" repeated her aunt. "Tell me what you're a-doin' of. Lookin' like a monkey with a white thing on yer 'ead! Speak at once, you good-for-nothin'!"

But Peggy felt overwhelmed with shame and confusion. "I 'spect I was dreamin', Aunt. Leastways you'd think so—I was—I was playin' at bein' a servant."

She made her confession in a contrite tone.

"Little fool!" said her aunt, but she turned over in her bed and went to sleep again, and Peggy did not stir till a clock outside struck seven, and then with a sigh she got out of bed, and carefully secreted her bit of glass and her cap under her mattress. It was her only hiding-place, and had held many a queer assortment of articles from time to time.