The Diary of a Goose Girl | Page 3

Heaven first, for she is a self-saturated person who
would never forgive the insult should she receive any lower place.
She welcomed me with the statement: "We do not take lodgers here,
nor boarders; no lodgers, nor boarders, but we do occasionally admit
paying guests, those who look as if they would appreciate the quietude
of the plyce and be willing as you might say to remunerate according."
{Mrs. Heaven: p10.jpg}
I did not mind at this particular juncture what I was called, so long as
the epithet was comparatively unobjectionable, so I am a paying guest,
therefore, and I expect to pay handsomely for the handsome appellation.
Mrs. Heaven is short and fat; she fills her dress as a pin-cushion fills its
cover; she wears a cap and apron, and she is so full of platitudes that
she would have burst had I not appeared as a providential outlet for
them. Her accent is not of the farm, but of the town, and smacks wholly
of the marts of trade. She is repetitious, too, as well as platitudinous. "I
'ope if there's anythink you require you will let us know, let us know,"
she says several times each day; and whenever she enters my
sitting-room she prefaces her conversation with the remark: "I trust you
are finding it quiet here, miss? It's the quietude of the plyce that is its
charm, yes, the quietude. And yet" (she dribbles on) "it wears on a
body after a while, miss. I often go into Woodmucket to visit one of my

sons just for the noise, simply for the noise, miss, for nothink else in
the world but the noise. There's nothink like noise for soothing nerves
that is worn threadbare with the quietude, miss, or at least that's my
experience; and yet to a strynger the quietude of the plyce is its charm,
undoubtedly its chief charm; and that is what our paying guests always
say, although our charges are somewhat higher than other plyces. If
there's anythink you require, miss, I 'ope you'll mention it. There is not
a commodious assortment in Barbury Green, but we can always send
the pony to Woodmucket in case of urgency. Our paying guest last
summer was a Mrs. Pollock, and she was by way of having sudden
fancies. Young and unmarried though you are, miss, I think you will
tyke my meaning without my speaking plyner? Well, at six o'clock of a
rainy afternoon, she was seized with an unaccountable desire for
vegetable marrows, and Mr. 'Eaven put the pony in the cart and went to
Woodmucket for them, which is a great advantage to be so near a town
and yet 'ave the quietude."
{Mr. Heaven: p11.jpg}
Mr. Heaven is merged, like Mr. Jellyby, in the more shining qualities of
his wife. A line of description is too long for him. Indeed, I can think of
no single word brief enough, at least in English. The Latin "nil" will do,
since no language is rich in words of less than three letters. He is nice,
kind, bald, timid, thin, and so colourless that he can scarcely be
discerned save in a strong light. When Mrs. Heaven goes out into the
orchard in search of him, I can hardly help calling from my window,
"Bear a trifle to the right, Mrs. Heaven--now to the left--just in front of
you now--if you put out your hands you will touch him."
Phoebe, aged seventeen, is the daughter of the house. She is virtuous,
industrious, conscientious, and singularly destitute of physical charm.
She is more than plain; she looks as if she had been planned without
any definite purpose in view, made of the wrong materials, been badly
put together, and never properly finished off; but "plain" after all is a
relative word. Many a plain girl has been married for her beauty; and
now and then a beauty, falling under a cold eye, has been thought plain.
Phoebe has her compensations, for she is beloved by, and reciprocates

the passion of, the Woodmancote carrier, Woodmucket being the
English manner of pronouncing the place of his abode. If he "carries"
as energetically for the great public as he fetches for Phoebe, then he
must be a rising and a prosperous man. He brings her daily, wild
strawberries, cherries, birds' nests, peacock feathers, sea-shells, green
hazel-nuts, samples of hens' food, or bouquets of wilted field flowers
tied together tightly and held with a large, moist, loving hand. He has
fine curly hair of sandy hue, which forms an aureole on his brow, and a
reddish beard, which makes another inverted aureole to match, round
his chin. One cannot look at him, especially when the sun shines
through him, without thinking how lovely he would be if stuffed and
set