Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ Brumm threw a pot of dye over me, Charlotte."

      "There's not much real damage, Charlotte," interposed her brother. "It looks worse than it is. I'll get it out of his hair presently, and put his clothes into a pail of water. What have you got to-night? It smells good."

      He alluded to supper, and took off the lid of the saucepan to peep in. She had some stewed beef, with carrots, and the savoury steam ascended to Robert's pleased face.

      Very few in Honey Fair managed as did Charlotte East. How she did her housework no one knew. Not a woman, married or single, got through more glove-sewing than Charlotte. Not one kept her house in better order: and her clothes and her brother's were neat and respectable, week-days as well as Sundays. Her work was taken into the warehouse on Saturday mornings, and her marketing was done. In the afternoon she cleaned her house, and by four o'clock was ready to sit down to her mending. No one ever saw her in a bustle, and yet all her work was done; and well done. Perhaps one great secret of it was that she rose very early in the morning, winter and summer.

      "Look, Robert, here is a nice book I have bought," said she, putting a periodical into his hands. "It comes out weekly. I shall take it in."

      Robert turned over the leaves. "It seems very interesting," he said presently. "Here's a paper that tells all about the Holy Land. And another that tells us how glass is made; I have often wondered."

      "You can read it to us of an evening while I work," said she. "It will be quite a help to our getting on Tom: almost as good as sending him to school. I gave–"

      The words were interrupted. The door was violently burst open, and a woman entered the kitchen; knocking at doors before entering was not the fashion in Honey Fair. The intruder was Mrs. Brumm.

      "I say, Robert East, did you see anything of my husband?"

      "I saw him go into the Horned Ram."

      "Then I wish the Horned Ram was into him!" wrathfully retorted Mrs. Brumm. "He vowed faithfully he'd come home with his wages the first thing after leaving work. He knows I have not a thing in the place for to-morrow—and Dame Buffle looking out for her money. I have a good mind to go down to the Horned Ram, and be on to him!"

      Robert East offered no opinion upon this delicate point. He remembered the last time Mrs. Brumm had gone to the Horned Ram to be "on" to her husband, and what it had produced. A midnight quarrel that disturbed the slumbers of Honey Fair.

      "Who was along of him?" pursued she.

      "Three or four of them. Hubbard and Jones, I saw go in: and Adam Thorneycroft."

      A quick rising of the head, as if startled, and a faint accession of colour, told that one of those names had struck, perhaps unpleasantly, on the ear of Charlotte East. "Where are your own earnings?" she asked of Mrs. Brumm.

      "I have had to take them to Bankes's," was the rueful reply. "It's a good deal now, and they're in a regular tantrum this week, and wouldn't even wait till Monday. They threatened to tell Brumm, and it frightened me out of my seventeen senses. And now, for him to go into that dratted Horned Ram with his wages! and me without a pennypiece! It's not more for the necessaries I want to get in, than for the things that is in pawn. I can't iron nothing: the irons is there."

      Charlotte, busy still, turned round. "I would not put in irons, and such things, that I wanted to use."

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