Free The Observations by Jane Harris Page B

with missus.
    Mostly I worked like a man with 6 arms. My mother used to say hard graft was for fools but with the help of missus I began to see that this was not necessarily the case. For one thing there was always a purpose to the day and I found I liked that. I enjoyed working up an appetite especially when I could get out into the fresh air to look about nie for missus said it put roses in my cheeks. It was not long before I had fine muscles forming in my arms from all the lifting and carrying, I tell you this I could have held a horse down in a gale.
“Parte pas les mains vides’ was
one of missus favourite sayings and she taught me how it was said and spelt in French. It means ‘Don’t go empty handed” and it is a good motto in life for you will find there is always something to be carried from one place to another and if you are in the country it is usually manure. But I didn’t mind that. The missus admired my muscles because she said that a servant girl
should
have strong arms, it was nothing to be
ashamed
of and she often asked to measure them to see how they were progressing.
    I do believe there was times, even in amongst the shite (excuse me but no other word will do) when I was fillt with a kind of Glory, was it God himself had entered me or was it the missus? Or was it in fact just fresh air and exercise, who could say?
    Most of all I began to think that if you could make someone happy with a good job well done, particularly someone as special as
my Arabella
(which was how I had already come to think of her—only never out loud!) then was that not worth something?
    There was this one time, I found a horse chestnut in the yard it was a beauty about the size of a babys fist so I polished it up with butter and a cloth and give it to the missus and she said she liked it very well and would even display it on her dressing table.
    Encouraged and delighted by this response, I spent the next two evenings secretly carving her name on a
1/2
of a raw potato, it looked quite good when it was done except the last “L‘ and ”A’ was squashed where I realised I was running out of spud. The missus liked this present very well too, she said I was clever and that you hardly noticed the squashed letters. Only she didn’t think it was quite healthy to keep a potato in her bedroom so she put it on the kitchen shelf where we could
both
admire it while we ate our meals.
    * * *
    One afternoon, missus rang for me to come to her room. She was sat by the window gazing out at the darkening horizon, perhaps a little sad. But she brightened up when I come in.
    “Look!” she says and gestured at the dressing table. Sure enough there was the horse chestnut I had give her proudly on display. I felt very pleased about that.
    “Now, Bessy,” she says. “Why don’t you open up my press?”
    I thought she might want me to brush down some of her clothes so I did as I was bid without thinking. I’d seen inside the press before, she had about 1/2 a dozen gowns on the shelves in there, all in soft shades of blue, grey, lilac and green.
    “Which do you like the best?” the missus says to me.
    “Oh I don’t know,” I says. They was nice enough clothes all right but perhaps not
exactly
to my taste—in those days I was young and preferred brighter colours and satin and more trimmings.
    “How about the aquamarine?” she says. “I’ve heard you admire that before now.”
    I looked at it—it was the one she had on the day I arrived and for that reason I did hold it in especial esteem.
    “I suppose that
might
be my favourite, marm.”
    “Try it on.”
    I looked at her. “Marm?”
    She smiled and her dimples appeared, it made you long to bite her cheeks (though of course I would never have done it!).
    “Bessy dear,” she says. “You’ve been a good and a true friend to me and look what you have done, given me a lovely horse chestnut, so I must give you something in return.”
    “And your potato,” I says.
    “Yes, of