Plain
work pays so bad, and mourning has been so plentiful this
winter, that I were tempted to take in any black work I could; and
now I'm suffering from it."
"And yet, Margaret, you're going on taking it in; that's what you'd
call foolish in another."
"It is, Mary! and yet what can I do? Folk mun live; and I think I
should go blind any way, and I daren't tell grandfather, else I
would leave it off; but he will so fret."
Margaret rocked herself backward and forward to still her emotion.
"O Mary!" she said, "I try to get his face off by heart, and I stare
at him so when he's not looking, and then shut my eyes to see if I
can remember his dear face. There's one thing, Mary, that serves a
bit to comfort me. You'll have heard of old Jacob Butterworth, the
singing weaver? Well, I know'd him a bit, so I went to him, and
said how I wished he'd teach me the right way o' singing; and he
says I've a rare fine voice, and I go once a week, and take a lesson
fra' him. He's been a grand singer in his day. He led the choruses
at the Festivals, and got thanked many a time by London folk; and
one foreign singer, Madame Catalani, turned round and shook him by
th' hand before the Oud Church* full o' people.
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