Even Mrs. Wesley detested her son-in-law, and called him "a coarse,
vulgar, immoral man "; but confessed (in his absence) that they were
all the better off for his help. Ease from debt she had never known;
but here at Wroote the clouds seemed to be breaking. Duns had been
fewer of late. With her poultry-yard and small dairy she was earning
a few pounds, and this gave her a sense of helpfulness she had not
known at Epworth; a pound saved may be a pound gained, but a pound
earned can be held in the hand, and the touch makes a wonderful
difference. The girls had flung themselves heartily into the
farm-work: they talked of it, at night, around the kitchen hearth
(for of the two sitting-rooms one had been given up to their father
for his library, and the other Hetty vowed to be "too grand for the
likes of dairy-women." Also the marsh-vapours in the Isle of Axholme
can be agueish after sunset, even in summer, and they found the fire
a comfort). Hetty had described these rural economies in a long
letter to Samuel at Westminster, and been answered by an "Heroick
Poem," pleasantly facetious:
"The spacious glebe around the house
Affords full pasture to the cows,
Whence largely milky nectar flows,
O sweet and cleanly dairy!"
"Unless or Moll, or Anne, or you,
Your duty should neglect to do,
And then 'ware haunches black and blue
By pinching of a fairy."
--With much in the same easy vein about "sows and pigs and porkets,"
and the sisters' housewifely duties:
"Or lusty Anne, or feeble Moll,
Sage Pat or sober Hetty."
And the sisters were amused by the lines and committed them to heart.
They had learnt of the pleasures of life mainly through books; and
now their simple enjoyment was, as it were, more real to them because
it could be translated into verse. In circumstances, then, they were
happier than they had been for many years: nor was poverty the real
reason for Hetty's going into service at Kelstein; since Emilia had
been fetched home from Lincoln (where for five years she had been
earning her livelihood as teacher in a boarding-school) expressly to
enjoy the family's easier fortune, and with a promise of pleasant
company to be met in Bawtry, Doncaster and the country around Wroote.
This promise had not been fulfilled, and Emilia's temper had soured
in consequence. Nor had the Rector's debts melted at the rate
expected. The weight of them still oppressed him and all the
household: but Mrs. Wesley knew in her heart that, were poverty the
only reason, Hetty need not go. Hetty knew it, too, and rebelled.
She was happy at Wroote; happier at least than she would be at
Kelstein. She did not wish to be selfish: she would go, if one of
the sisters must. But why need any of them go?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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