Chapter 5 - Page 2

attempts to rise but we hold her down) to
lie there and watch that beautiful screen being spoilt. I reply
that the beauty of the screen has ever been its miserable defect:
ho, there! for a knife with which to spoil its beauty and make the
bedroom its fitting home. As there is no knife handy, my foot will
do; I raise my foot, and then - she sees that it is bare, she cries
to me excitedly to go back to bed lest I catch cold. For though,
ever careless of herself, she will wander the house unshod, and
tell us not to talk havers when we chide her, the sight of one of
us similarly negligent rouses her anxiety at once. She is willing
now to sign any vow if only I will take my bare feet back to bed,
but probably she is soon after me in hers to make sure that I am
nicely covered up.

It is scarcely six o'clock, and we have all promised to sleep for
another hour, but in ten minutes she is sure that eight has struck
(house disgraced), or that if it has not, something is wrong with
the clock. Next moment she is captured on her way downstairs to
wind up the clock. So evidently we must be up and doing, and as we
have no servant, my sister disappears into the kitchen, having
first asked me to see that 'that woman' lies still, and 'that
woman' calls out that she always does lie still, so what are we
blethering about?

She is up now, and dressed in her thick maroon wrapper; over her
shoulders (lest she should stray despite our watchfulness) is a
shawl, not placed there by her own hands, and on her head a
delicious mutch. O that I could sing the paean of the white mutch
(and the dirge of the elaborate black cap) from the day when she
called witchcraft to her aid and made it out of snow-flakes, and
the dear worn hands that washed it tenderly in a basin, and the
starching of it, and the finger-iron for its exquisite frills that
looked like curls of sugar, and the sweet bands with which it tied
beneath the chin! The honoured snowy mutch, how I love to see it
smiling to me from the doors and windows of the poor; it is always
smiling - sometimes maybe a wavering wistful smile, as if a tear-
drop lay hidden among, the frills. A hundred times I have taken
the characterless cap from my mother's head and put the mutch in
its place and tied the bands beneath her chin, while she protested
but was well pleased. For in her heart she knew what suited her
best and would admit it, beaming, when I put a mirror into her
hands and told her to look; but nevertheless the cap cost no less
than so-and-so, whereas - Was that a knock at the door? She is
gone, to put on her cap!

She begins the day by the fireside with the New Testament in her
hands, an old volume with its loose pages beautifully refixed, and
its covers