On looking through the washing, Miss Day had exclaimed in horror at the way in which her stockings were mended.
"Whoever did it? They've been done since you left here. I would never have passed such darns."
Laura crimsoned. "Those? Oh, an old nurse we've got at home. We've had her for years and years - but her eyesight's going now."
Miss Day sniffed audibly, "So I should think. To cobble like that!"
They were Mother's darns hastily made, late at night, and with all Mother's genial impatience at useful sewing as opposed to beautiful. Laura's intention had been to shield Mother from criticism, as well as to spare Miss Day's feelings. But to have done it as clumsily as this! To have her wince under Miss Day's scepticism! It was only a wonder that the governess had not there and then taxed her with the fib. For who believed in old nurses nowadays? They were a 'stock property', borrowed from readings in The Family Herald, from Tennyson's Lady Clare. Why on earth had such a far-fetched excuse leapt to her tongue? Why could she not have said Sarah, the servent, the maid-of-all-work? Then Miss Day would have had no chance to sniff, and she, Laura, could have believed herself believed, instead of having to fret over her own stupidity.
Quotation from: The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson. 1910.
