Read Online Replenish the Earth by Anna Jacobs - Free Book Online Page A

impatient of digression and desperate to understand how her family had sunk so low.
    Mary screwed up her forehead in thought. ‘Well, mistress, after a day or two Squire called all us servants into the hall, indoor an’ outdoor, all of us together, an’ he told us he’d hev to turn us off. Terrible shock, that were! Some of us had been here all our lives. He told us we could stay on till we found new places, but to be quick about it.’
    ‘Why didn’t you leave, then?’  
    ‘Because,’ she shifted her feet uneasily, hesitating, then said in a rush, ‘Well, truth to tell, it were on account of Petey. My Harry could’ve got a job easy, but folk was afraid of Petey. They wouldn’t let us take him with us, an’ me, I wouldn’t have him put in the poorhouse. It’d kill my boy to be shut up in that place.’
    She added, almost to herself, ‘I don’t know now if I did right. Fair broke my Harry’s heart, it did, to go for a day labourer, him as had been under-coachman. When we couldn’t find nowhere to go, Squire said we could stay on here if I did some cleanin’ for him an’ such. He couldn’t pay us no wages, but we had a roof over our heads an’ the leftovers, so we managed. 
    ‘Then my Harry keeled over in the lane and died one day. Sudden, it were. No time to say goodbye. After Squire died, I stayed on here. Don’t allus eat so good, but we manage, me an’ Petey do. He gets bits of work sometimes an’ I do washin’ an’ such for Mrs Pursley. An’ there’s stuff growin’ in the garden still.’ 
    After a moment or two they continued the tour, but Mary kept harking back to the subject of the Squire's losses. ‘Sold off Hay Nook Farm, your granfer did, and Downleigh Meadows and Uppercombe Edge. Sold some of his cottages in the village too.’
    And his London house and business interests, mentally added Sarah, who had had the whole list from Mr Jamieson. 
    ‘That Mr Sewell bought ’em,’ Mary went on. ‘Bought everythin’ he could lay his hands on. Foreigner, he is. Comes from up Bristol way. Made hisself a fortune from sellin’ tea an’ such-like, they d’say. He were wild to buy the Manor, but the Squire wouldn’t part with that, choose how. Said he intended to die in his own home an’ they could fight over it afterwards. He did it, too.’ 
    ‘Did what?’
    ‘Died here. Just like he said he would. Died in the great parlour. That Frenchie found him one evening, sat there in his chair, stiff as a board. An’ now Mr Sewell tries to call hisself Squire. Built a big house down on Marsh Bottom, he has, an’ calls it The Hall. I d’call it Marsh Bottom still! That’un’s no Squire! Don’t know nothin’ about the land, he don’t. Proper townie, he be.’
    She scowled. ‘Them as work there has to call him Squire, though, else they’ll lose their places. Throw you out of your job an’ cottage soon as look at you, he would. So folks don’t dare say nothin’ ’cept what he wants to hear - specially if those two men of his be near. Tell their master all they hear, they do. Then bad things happen to folk.’ She looked sideways at Sarah and added, ‘Be you goin’ to sell to him, mistress, or be you goin’ to live here?’
    ‘I’m staying, though I don’t know how we’re going to manage,’ she admitted. ‘There isn’t much money.’
    ‘Old Master did allus live very fine,’ volunteered Mary, ‘right to the end. You could feed ten families for a year on what Old Master spent on clothes, let alone the wages he paid that Frenchie.’
    Sarah stared at her. ‘How much does it cost to buy food in the country? Can you tell me some prices?’
    Mary blinked and struggled to gather her slow thoughts. ‘I couldn’t rightly say,  mistress. Folks don’t buy much food, if they can help it. They d’grow things themselves.’
    ‘Grow what sort of things?’ Oh, it was galling to be so ignorant of country life!
    ‘Well, they d’keep pigs an’ chickens an’ such. White bread