The Day of Small Things — Background and Themes

she put, as it were, under my charge; saying her own hands were full enough, and too full already, and the superintendence would rouse me, and do me good. I shall never forget her tone and attitude when, on entering one of these cottages, and espying a small grease-spot on the floor, she stood transfixed, and tragically exclaimed—

“What’s _that_ I see?”

The poor woman looked cowed; and I am sure I felt so.

When we came out, Miss Burt said to me, complacently and with a little authority, “That’s the way you must do things.” She had looked into every corner, turned up the basins and tea-cups, detected a black-beetle, which scudded away with a very reasonable instinct of self-preservation, and removed the match-box, which she said was too near the fire.

It might be her way, but I could never make it mine. I could not defy the _Lares_ and _Lemures_ of a rustic hearth in that fashion; and never could make myself more at home in a poor person’s dwelling than its owner. But perhaps Miss Burt did most good.

Time had its healing effect. I had practically learnt that here we have no “continuing city,” and the impression of the lesson was perhaps weakening, when I was laid low by a prostrating and painful illness, that at first threatened my life, and then left me in a state of weakness and incapacity that has confined me two years to this sofa.

Thus, the story of my life is comprised in few words. And yet I retain the habit of jotting down its nothings. As a favourite writer of mine in _Fraser’s Magazine_ has said, “There is a richness about the life of a person who keeps a diary, unknown to others. A million more little links and ties must bind him to the members of his family circle, and to all among whom he lives. Life, to him, is surrounded, intertwined, entangled with thousands of slight incidents, which give it beauty, kindliness, reality.”

I wish Harry Prout would leave off writing poetry. He might do something good in prose, but he has a taste, which he mistakes for a talent, for verse. There are many books of the day which he might translate well, if he would but seize the passing moments as they fly.

Harry looked in this evening, and gladly remained to drink tea with me. There was a small iced plum-cake on the tea-table, a present from Mrs. Secker; and I was pleased to see the lad pay his respects to it pretty handsomely. We got quite cozy and confidential over our little meal. He looked about him with satisfaction, and said, “Everything is so trig and tidy here! I wish we were in your easy circumstances, Mrs. Cheerlove.”

I laughed, and said, “My circumstances are very narrow, however easy I may make them—or take them.”

“They may be comparatively easy, though, if not absolutely, I think, ma’am.”

“Yes, there are comparative and absolute values.”

“Compared, for instance, with those of a straitened family like ours.”

“Ah, Harry, there are so many of you! Your father has a larger income than mine, but there is not so much to spend per head. But soon, my dear boy, some of you will be able to increase it; and, meanwhile, comfort yourself with the reflection that the real or imagined necessary expenses of those who have large means, are greater than those of persons who have only small ones.”

“I can’t make the reflection, ma’am, because I don’t believe it.”

“It is so, though, I assure you. Take the case of a number of persons (I quote Archbishop Whately) of each amount of income, from a hundred a year to a hundred thousand, and you will find the preponderance of those who are in pecuniary difficulties constantly augmenting as you proceed upwards.”

“If the _fact_ be so, ma’am, of course I cannot controvert it; but I cannot see how it should be so.”

“And when you come to sovereign states, whose revenues are reckoned by millions, you will scarcely find one of them that is not involved in debt.”

“Ah, they have so many public expenses.”

“And private people have so many private expenses. The temptation to spend increases faster than the wealth.”

“Well, it seems to me, that if I had but competence, I could keep within my income.”

“At first you would; but your ideas of competence would alter. At least, it is the common tendency of people to go beyond their means. I feel it in myself.”

“_You?_” incredulously.