‘Excuse me, Master Oliver, but it’s much you know of it, sir,’ said Sally, half huffily, half scornfully. ‘And it is little thanks Mrs. Polley, poor woman, have got for her work in the shop and her rule of her family. She were a bit set up, in her own way, and vaunty of what she had done for them gals and that silly man of hers. Nobody came near herself, and nought that belonged to her was to be sneezed at. Ah! her mouth’s shut now, and she won’t hold up her head again, not by a long chalk, as she has done in Friarton. I am sorry for her though,’ reflected Sally, showing some signs of relenting, ‘for she were a through-going woman. Her took the whole load upon her own shoulders, when it fell off them sloping ones of Polley’s, and asked help from nobody. Hard she drudged a dozen years back, never sparing herself, to keep her family out of the gutter. It was ill-done of any one of them to humble her pride. But it’s the way of children—so it is. It’s a comfort to the likes of me, as is a single woman, alone in the world, except for a niece and neffy or two—looking after my savings I’ll be bound, Master Oliver—to think that I might have had a man and bairns to my share, and been no better—rather worse served. But I’ll fault Mrs. Polley with this’—Sally returned to the charge—‘she would do everything in the shop with her ten fingers. She would keep the management of the books and accounts in her own hands. Why, them gals weren’t properly brought up to the grocery business or to any other. They were as silly as silly could be, if you took them off weighing a pound of sugar, or cutting a bar of soap, as a child could do. Our Miss Fan could have bought them at the one end of the town and sold them at t’other. They went a deal of their time hand-idle, or falalling with their best clothes; and was that an up-bringing to keep them out of mischief? I have it on good authority, they would lay a-bed in the mornings, and they were out at their gadding every blessed evening, though she pulled them up tight about minding meals and hours, and shutting up to her face. If they were quick, they could get their heads out—most of all Miss ’Mily, as was the mother’s favourite—so it seems she had been drawing a score under her mother’s nose, and carrying on at a fine rate with that scamp of a half gentleman—a pretty gentleman! Mrs. Sam Cobbes’ Lon’on brother, though Mrs. Polley had forbidden her gal to have anything to say to him.’