For it was not a really poor population. The men were seafaring, the

women lacemaking, and just well enough off to make dissent doubly

attractive as an escape from some of the interfering almsgiving of the

place. Over-visiting, criticism of dress, and inquisitorial examinations

had made more than one Primitive Methodist, and no severe distress had

been so recent as to render the women tolerant of troublesome weekly

inspections. The Curtis sisters were, however, regarded as an exception;

they were viewed as real gentlefolks, not only by their own tenants, but

by all who were conscious of their hereditary claims to respect; they

did not care whether hair were long or short, and their benefits were

more substantial and reliable than could be looked for from the casual

visitors and petty gentry around, so that sundry houses that were

forbidden ground to district visitors, were ready to grant them a

welcome.

One of these belonged to the most able lacemaker in the place, a

hard-working woman, who kept seven little pupils in a sort of cupboard

under the staircase, with a window into the back garden, "because," said

she, "they did no work if they looked out into the front, there were so

many gapsies;" these gapsies consisting of the very scanty traffic of

the further end of Mackarel Lane. For ten hours a day did these children

work in a space just wide enough for them to sit, with the two least

under the slope of the stairs, permitted no distraction from their

bobbins, but invaded by their mistress on the faintest sound of tongues.

Into this hotbed of sprigs was admitted a child who had been a special

favourite at school, an orphan niece of the head of the establishment.

The two brothers had been lost together at sea; and while the one

widow became noted for her lace, the other, a stranger to the art, had

maintained herself by small millinery, and had not sacrificed her little

girl to the Moloch of lace, but had kept her at school to a later age

than usual in the place. But the mother died, and the orphan was at once

adopted by the aunt, with the resolve to act the truly kind part by her,

and break her in to lacemaking. That determination was a great blow to

the school visitors; the girls were in general so young, or so stupefied

with their work, that an intelligent girl like Lovedy Kelland was no

small treasure to them; there were designs of making her a pupil teacher

in a few years, and offers and remonstrances rained in upon her aunt.

But they had no effect; Mrs. Kelland was persuaded that the child had

been spoilt by learning, and in truth poor Lovedy was a refractory

scholar; she was too lively to bear the confinement patiently; her mind

was too much awake not to rebel against the dulness, and her fingers had

not been brought into training early enough. Her incessant tears spoilt

her thread, and Mrs. Kelland decided that "she'd never get her bread

till she was broke of her buke;" which breaking was attempted by a

summary pawning of all poor Lovedy's reward books. The poor child

confided her loss to her young lady teacher at the Sunday school; the

young lady, being new, young, and inflammable, reproached Mrs. Kelland

with dishonesty and tyranny to the orphan, and in return was nearly

frightened out of her wits by such a scolding as only such a woman as

the lace mistress could deliver. Then Mr. Touchett tried his hand, and

though he did not meet with quite so much violence, all he heard was

that she had "given Lovedy the stick for being such a little tod as to

complain, when she knew the money for the bukes was put safe away in

her money-box. She was not going to the Sunday schule again, not she,

to tell stories against her best friends!" And when the next district

visitor came that way, the door was shut in her face, with the tract

thrown out at the opening, and an intimation in Mrs. Kelland's shrill

voice, that no more bukes were wanted; she got plenty from Miss Curtis.




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