Read The Observations for Free Online Page B

cast-offs. Missus must have seen the look on my face.
    “I think they will be about the right size, don’t you?” she says and then, “They are only temporary until we can get some made up.”
    I picked up the striped frock and examined it. At least it seemed clean and it smelled like it had just been pressed.
    “Put it on,” says the missus.
    “Should I change here, marm?”
    “Why not?” she says.
    I took off my own frock and stepped into the striped one. It fastened up the front from the waist. My fingers was trembling for some reason and so the missus stepped forward and done it for me, every button, one after the other. When she had the frock all fastened, she stroked my hair and smiled and took a step back.
    “Perfect,” she says.
    “Are they your frocks, missus?”
    “No, no,” she says. I looked at her and she went on. “They belonged to a girl who was here some time ago. She—she left some things when she went. I put them in the attic, in case—in case she came back.”
    Well, there was something queer about all this, the way she hesitated and avoided my gaze, you could have sensed it a mile off downwind with your eyes blindfold your nose blocked your ears stopped up and a cork in your hole. But before I could ask any more she clapped her hands together and laughed very gay.
    Now then, let’s get started,“ she says, as if she was inviting me to join her in a great old game. ”Put on a cap and one of the aprons.
    Reverend Pollock is coming to visit and I would very much like you to wait on us in the parlour.“
    “Very good marm,” I says.
    I had never met the Reverend Pollock but would have laid money that he was U.P. that is “United Presbyterian‘. I have to admit that I felt a little thrill of excitement at the notion of passing myself off as a maid to a Man Of The Cloth even if he was a member of what my mother always called The Opposition. Not that she was religious or Holy in fact to my knowledge the last time she’d went to Mass she was full and fell off the chair laughing and then was sick in her purse, but Blueskins or ”You Pees’ I was acquainted with one or two of their number and they would have made a saint spit.
    By 3 o’clock the transformation was complete, I was a maid good and proper. I had on me the striped frock, a white apron and a frilled cap, my hair combed flat over my ears and caught in a bun at the back very sober. I even had time for a wash. Whoever the runaway girl was she had no figure for my titties was squashed flat as fadge inside the frock but otherwise it did not pinch. Missus give me an inspection and pronounced me good and it was so.
    She got me to lay a fire in the parlour and light it and then sent me back to the kitchen to butter the scones while she sat down with her sewing. At 1/2 past 3 there was a knock on the front door. I hurried into the hall and opened up there was the Reverend Pollock on the step, a well built man about fifty with side-whiskers and a handsome old phiz. He blinked in surprise when he seen me and give his curls a bewildered shake, I think he was expecting someone else.
    “Well—gracious—hah!” he says in tones that was meant to be jolly but to my ears sounded awful forced. I made him a curtsey and give him “Good afternoon sir,” then ushered him in all this, very fancy.
    “Yes yes,” he says. “Now then I haven’t seen
you
before.” He said it like he was pretending to scold you and then he made this noise, not quite a chuckle and not quite a sigh but a sentimental sound somewhere in between, “Aahh-hah!”
    “No sir,” I says. “I’m new.”
    “Aahh-hah!” he goes again then set to nodding shrewdly and examining me out the corner of his eye while I took his hat and coat. The Reverend Pollock, as I came to realise, liked to think of himself as a wily fox, he hated anything to get past him. I noticed he had a strange smell wafting about his person of paraffin or somesuch and his boots creaked like an old