Page:Autobiography of Mary Smith, Schoolmistress and Nonconformist, The (1892).djvu/90

82 by those of the south. In the old times, as I have heard it said, the women of the south wore the same clothing winter and summer, scorning to make any difference, lest they should be thought to want hardihood. Indeed, so far as knowledge went, we had been very badly equipped for our journey, none of the thousand springs of incidental hearsay, between the far north and the provincial south, being then in existence.

Consequently, for the first few weeks of our residence at Brough, we were in a most awkward predicament, quite as bad as though we had been in a foreign country; knowing nothing of the great difference in manners, habits, and modes of living of the inhabitants; nor yet understanding their grotesque dialect,—at least, to our ears it had a grotesque sound with it—while the common people of Brough seemed wholly inapprehensive of what we said. Thus on the first day after our arrival, wanting some additional furniture, Mr. and Mrs. Osborn went to Appleby to purchase it, leaving me and the baby at home, with a woman who lived in a cottage close by us, to clean and put things to rights.

Never shall I forget poor Betty's consternation