Chapter 14.7 - Shirley

Drop a hint to Helena that, though a well-meaning, I am rather a neglected character, and then she will feel less scandalized at my ignorance about clothing societies and such things. On the morrow, Caroline found Shirley sitting gravely at her desk with an account book, a bundle of bank notes, and a well-filled purse before her. She was looking mighty serious, but a little puzzled. She said she had been casting an eye over the weekly expenditure in housekeeping at the hall, trying to find out where she could retrench, that she had also just given audience to Mrs. Gill, the cook, and had sent that person away with a notion that her—Shirley's—brain was certainly crazed. I have lectured her on the duty of being careful, she said, in a way quite new to her. So eloquent was I on the text of economy that I surprised myself. For, you see, it is altogether a fresh idea. I never thought, much less spoke on the subject till lately. But it is all theory, for when I come to the practical part I could retrench nothing. I had not firmness to take off a single pound of butter, or to prosecute to any clear result an inquest into the destiny of either dripping, lard, bread, cold meat, or other kitchen perquisite whatever. I know we never get up to illuminations at Fieldhead, but I could not ask the meaning of sundry, quite unaccountable pounds of candles. We do not wash for the parish. Yet I viewed in silence items of soap and bleaching powder calculated to satisfy the solicitude of the most anxious inquirer after our position in reference to those articles. Carnivorous I am not, nor is Mrs. Pryor, nor is Mrs. Gill herself. Yet I only hemmed and opened my eyes a little wide when I saw the butcher's bill, whose figure seemed to prove that fact. Falsehood, I mean.