England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Schools -- Fiction; Teenage girls -- Fiction
Heigho! I declare if it isn't almost as hard work to get through this
description of the eatables and drinkables at the Cedars as it was in
reality. Let me see, where was I? Oh, at Thursday! Then on Fridays it
was shoulder of mutton again, with the gravy full of sixpences; and, as
for fat--oh! they used to be so horribly fat, that I'm sure the poor
sheep must have lived in a state of bilious headache all their lives,
until the butcher mercifully killed them; while--only fancy, at a
finishing establishment!--if that odious Patty Smith did not give Clara
and me the horrors one night by an account of how her father's man--I
must do her the credit of saying that she had no stuck-up pride in her,
and never spoke of her "esteemed parent" as anything but father; for
only fancy a "papa," with a greasy red face, cutting steaks, or chopping
at a great wooden block, and crying "What-d'yer-buy--buy--buy?" Let's
see--oh! of how her father's man killed the sheep; and I declare it was
quite dreadful; and I said spitefully to Clara afterwards that I should
write by the next post and tell mamma how nicely my finishing education
was progressing, for I knew already how they killed sheep. Well, there
is only one more day's fare to describe--Saturday's, and that is soon
done, for it was precisely the same as we had on the Wednesday, only the
former used mostly to be the tattery days and the latter the hard ones.
Now, of course, I am aware that I am writing this is a very desultory
manner; but after Mrs Blunt's rules and regulations, what can you
expect? I am writing to ease my mind, and therefore I must write just
as I think; and as this is entirely my own, I intend so to do, and those
may find fault who like. I did mean to go through the different
adventures and impressions of every day; but I have given up that idea,
because the days have managed to run one into the other, and got
themselves confused into a light and shady sad-coloured web, like Miss
Furness's scrimpy silk dress that she wore on Sundays--a dreadful
antique thing, like rhubarb shot with magnesia; for the nasty old puss
always seemed to buy her things to give her the aspect of having been
washed out, though with her dreadfully sharp features and
cheesey-looking hair--which she called auburn--I believe it would have
been impossible to make her look nice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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