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Updated: May 3, 2025
"It was such a favourite of mine, Miss Arkwright," said he; "but what is sacred to a maid-of-all-work? My only consolation, when she smashed it this morning, was the thought that it would serve in the foreground of your sketch."
The farmer bustled in and out, greeting some of us as old friends, summoning Alice, the maid-of-all-work a down-trodden, stupid-looking girl of fourteen to make up the fire and get the kettle boiling, and putting his head into the doorway, "just to tell the missus," as he ushered us in.
Another mind that was being wrought up to a climax was Nanny's, the maid-of-all-work, who had a warm heart and a still warmer temper. Nanny adored her mistress: she had been heard to say, that she was 'ready to kiss the ground as the missis trod on'; and Walter, she considered, was her baby, of whom she was as jealous as a lover.
Because a queen or a duchess wears long robes on great occasions, a maid-of-all-work or a factory-girl thinks she must make herself a nuisance by trailing through the street, picking up and carrying about with her pah! that's what I call getting vulgarity into your bones and marrow. Making believe be what you are not is the essence of vulgarity.
Why should the poor holder of a season-ticket have the grim word "commutation" hung round his neck? Why should the simple business of going from one place to another be labelled "transportation"? And these words are apt and lucid compared with "proposition." Now "proposition" is America's maid-of-all-work. It means everything or nothing. It may be masculine, feminine, neuter he, she, it.
She might then have discovered as well a certain look of earnestness and service that would at first have attracted her for its own sake, and then repelled her for James's; for she would assuredly have read in it what she would have counted dangerous for him; but seeing her poorly dressed, and looking untidy, which at the moment she could not help, the mother took her for an ordinary maid-of-all-work, and never for a moment doubted that her son must see her just as she did.
Tipping; and, as the door opened, the little maid-of-all-work was to be heard whispering her mistress that a young gentleman who said he was her nephew had come and was upstairs with "the master." "Well, I never!" exclaimed Mrs. Tipping, immediately starting upstairs towards the open door of the cobblery.
"Brayvo, Stumps!" cried Slagg, "your intellec' is growin'. It on'y remains to appoint you ship's monkey and maid-of-all-work specially dirty work and, then, with a hearty vote o' thanks to myself for my conduct in the chair, to vacate the same an' dissolve the meetin'."
He wished that it was three, for he was tired of his own thoughts and company, and naturally anxious to renew his acquaintance with the strange girl who had begun by impressing him so deeply and ended by saving his life. There was complete quiet in the house; Betty, the maid-of-all-work, was employed in the kitchen, both the doctors had gone, and Elizabeth and her father were out.
No poor little ignorant maid-of-all-work could keep Mrs. Butler back now. She swept down the passage, followed by the shrinking, but curious Miss Peters. She threw open the drawing-room door herself, and intruded upon the abashed young people with a stately flourish. "How are you, Matty?" she said. "Oh, pray don't let us disturb you. Is that you, Augustus? I'm pleased to see you, young man.
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