Another pause. The potatoes were being scrubbed violently. "He always
_was_ a bit above me, you know, ma'am. And he was led away."
The potatoes were more than finished. Jane rose sharply, with a sigh,
and rapped the basin down on the table.
"I don't care," she said. "I don't care a rap. He will find out his
mistake yet. It serves me right. I was stuck up about him. I ought not
to have looked so high. And I am glad things are as things are."
My wife was in the kitchen, seeing to the higher cookery. After the
confession of the boot-throwing, she must have watched poor Jane fuming
with a certain dismay in those brown eyes of hers. But I imagine they
softened again very quickly, and then Jane's must have met them.
"Oh, ma'am," said Jane, with an astonishing change of note, "think
of all that _might_ have been! Oh, ma'am, I _could_ have been so
happy! I ought to have known, but I didn't know.... You're very kind
to let me talk to you, ma'am ... for it's hard on me, ma'am ... it's
har-r-r-r-d"--
And I gather that Euphemia so far forgot herself as to let Jane sob
out some of the fulness of her heart on a sympathetic shoulder. My
Euphemia, thank Heaven, has never properly grasped the importance of
"keeping up her position." And since that fit of weeping, much of the
accent of bitterness has gone out of Jane's scrubbing and brush work.
Indeed, something passed the other day with the butcher-boy--but that
scarcely belongs to this story. However, Jane is young still, and time
and change are at work with her. We all have our sorrows, but I do not
believe very much in the existence of sorrows that never heal.