ABSTRACT
Up to this time we had felt it rather impertinent to tell each other of our individual silent wonder as to what Miss Phillis lived on; but I know in our hearts we each thought about it, with a kind of respectful pity for her fallen low estate. Miss Phillis, that we remembered like an angel for beauty, and like a little princess for the imperious sway she exercised, and which was such sweet compulsion that we had all felt proud to be her slaves; Miss Phillis was now a worn, plain woman, in homely dress, tending towards old age; and looking – (at that time I dared not have spoken so insolent a thought, not even to myself) – but she did look as if she had hardly the proper nourishing food she required. One day, I remember Mrs. Jones the butcher’s 36wife – (she was a Drumble person) – saying in her saucy way, that she was not surprised to see Miss Morton so bloodless and pale, for she only treated herself to a Sunday’s dinner of meat, and lived on slop and bread-and-butter 22 all the rest of the week. Ethelinda put on her severe face – a look that I am afraid of to this day – and said, ‘Mrs. Jones, do you suppose Miss Morton can eat your half-starved meat? You do not know how choice and dainty she is, as becomes one born and bred like her. What was it we had to bring for her only last Saturday from the grand new butcher’s in Drumble, Biddy?’ – (We took our eggs to market in Drumble every Saturday, for the cotton-spinners would give us a higher price than the Morton people; the more fools they!)
