Poor Miss Finch | Page 9

been, in its time, as I afterwards heard, a convent of nuns. Here
were snug little Gothic windows, and dark ivy-covered walls of
venerable stone: repaired in places, at some past period, with quaint red
bricks. I had hoped that I should enter the house by this side of it. But
no. The boy--after appearing to be at a loss what to do with me--led the
way to a door on the modern side of the building, and rang the bell.
A slovenly young maid-servant admitted me to the house.
Possibly, this person was new to the duty of receiving visitors. Possibly,
she was bewildered by a sudden invasion of children in dirty frocks,
darting out on us in the hall, and then darting away again into invisible
back regions, screeching at the sight of a stranger. At any rate, she too
appeared to be at a loss what to do with me. After staring hard at my
foreign face, she suddenly opened a door in the wall of the passage, and
admitted me into a small room. Two more children in dirty frocks
darted, screaming, out of the asylum thus offered to me. I mentioned
my name, as soon as I could make myself heard. The maid appeared to
be terrified at the length of it. I gave her my card. The maid took it
between a dirty finger and thumb--looked at it as if it was some
extraordinary natural curiosity--turned it round, exhibiting correct black

impressions in various parts of it of her finger and thumb--gave up
understanding it in despair, and left the room. She was stopped outside
(as I gathered from the sounds) by a returning invasion of children in
the hall. There was whispering; there was giggling; there was, every
now and then, a loud thump on the door. Prompted by the children, as I
suppose--pushed in by them, certainly--the maid suddenly reappeared
with a jerk, "Oh, if you please, come this way," she said. The invasion
of children retreated again up the stairs--one of them in possession of
my card, and waving it in triumph on the first landing. We penetrated
to the other end of the passage. Again, a door was opened.
Unannounced, I entered another, and a larger room. What did I see?
Fortune had favored me at last. My lucky star had led me to the
mistress of the house.
I made my best curtsey, and found myself confronting a large,
light-haired, languid, lymphatic lady--who had evidently been amusing
herself by walking up and down the room, at the moment when I
appeared. If there can be such a thing as a _damp woman_--this was
one. There was a humid shine on her colorless white face, and an
overflow of water in her pale blue eyes. Her hair was not dressed; and
her lace cap was all on one side. The upper part of her was clothed in a
loose jacket of blue merino; the lower part was robed in a dimity
dressing gown of doubtful white. In one hand, she held a dirty
dogs'-eared book, which I at once detected to be a Circulating Library
novel. Her other hand supported a baby enveloped in flannel, sucking at
her breast. Such was my first experience of Reverend Finch's
Wife--destined to be also the experience of all aftertime. Never
completely dressed; never completely dry; always with a baby in one
hand and a novel in the other--such was Finch's wife.
"Oh! Madame Pratolungo? Yes. I hope somebody has told Miss Finch
you are here. She has her own establishment, and manages everything
herself. Have you had a pleasant journey?" (These words were spoken
vacantly, as if her mind was occupied with something else. My first
impression of her suggested that she was a weak, good-natured woman,
and that she must have originally occupied a station in the humbler

ranks of life.)
"Thank you, Mrs. Finch," I said. "I have enjoyed most heartily my
journey among your beautiful hills."
"Oh! you like the hills? Excuse my dress. I was half an hour late this
morning. When you lose half an hour in this house, you never can pick
it up again, try how you may." (I soon discovered that Mrs. Finch was
always losing half an hour out of her day, and that she never, by any
chance, succeeded in ending it again, as she had just told me.)
"I understand, madam. The cares of a numerous family--"
"Ah! that's just where it is." (This was a favorite phrase with Mrs.
Finch). "There's Finch, he gets up in the morning and goes and works
in the garden. Then there's the washing of the children; and the dreadful
waste that goes on in the kitchen. And Finch, he comes in without any
notice, and wants his