Poyser should scold Molly the housemaid with unusual severity. To all
appearance Molly had got through her after-dinner work in an exemplary
manner, had "cleaned herself" with great dispatch, and now came to ask,
submissively, if she should sit down to her spinning till milking time.
But this blameless conduct, according to Mrs. Poyser, shrouded a secret
indulgence of unbecoming wishes, which she now dragged forth and held up
to Molly's view with cutting eloquence.
"Spinning, indeed! It isn't spinning as you'd be at, I'll be bound, and
let you have your own way. I never knew your equals for gallowsness. To
think of a gell o' your age wanting to go and sit with half-a-dozen men!
I'd ha' been ashamed to let the words pass over my lips if I'd been you.
And you, as have been here ever since last Michaelmas, and I hired you
at Treddles'on stattits, without a bit o' character--as I say, you might
be grateful to be hired in that way to a respectable place; and you knew
no more o' what belongs to work when you come here than the mawkin i'
the field. As poor a two-fisted thing as ever I saw, you know you was.
Who taught you to scrub a floor, I should like to know? Why, you'd leave
the dirt in heaps i' the corners--anybody 'ud think you'd never been
brought up among Christians.
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