As Mr. Rushworth is to act too,
there can be no harm. I only wish Tom had known his own
mind when the carpenters began, for there was the loss
of half a day's work about those side-doors. The curtain
will be a good job, however. The maids do their work
very well, and I think we shall be able to send back
some dozens of the rings. There is no occasion to put
them so very close together. I _am_ of some use, I hope,
in preventing waste and making the most of things.
There should always be one steady head to superintend
so many young ones. I forgot to tell Tom of something
that happened to me this very day. I had been looking
about me in the poultry-yard, and was just coming out,
when who should I see but Dick Jackson making up
to the servants' hall-door with two bits of deal board
in his hand, bringing them to father, you may be sure;
mother had chanced to send him of a message to father,
and then father had bid him bring up them two bits of board,
for he could not no how do without them. I knew what all
this meant, for the servants' dinner-bell was ringing
at the very moment over our heads; and as I hate such
encroaching people (the Jacksons are very encroaching,
I have always said so: just the sort of people to get
all they can), I said to the boy directly (a great lubberly
fellow of ten years old, you know, who ought to be ashamed
of himself), '_I'll_ take the boards to your father,
Dick, so get you home again as fast as you can.
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