N WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO
OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND

Chapter VI

IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND

With a high heart Loveday began her quest for the work which was to earn
for her the coveted white satin sash. She had but three weeks in which
to make a matter of several shillings, and this meant that she must sell
every moment of the time which was hers when her duties about her aunt's
were discharged for the day. In the morning she was busy with cleaning
and cooking till almost mid-day, and in the evenings she had the milk to
fetch, but in the afternoons she could be sure of a few hours if Aunt
Senath did not guess she wanted them for herself and invent tasks. On
Mondays, of course, the washing kept her all day at the tub, and on
Fridays at the mangle, on Saturdays there was the baking of the bread,
while Thursday, being market day, she was supposed to keep house while
Aunt Senath went in to Bugletown--a task that slut of a woman was too
fond of for its chances of gossip to send her niece in her stead. On
Thursdays Loveday was wont to stay in and see to the mending, but she
reflected that, by sitting up in her bed at night to darn and patch by
the light of the wick that floated in a cup of fish-oil, she might take
charge of some neighbour's children on that day instead and Aunt Senath
be none the wiser. Loveday had a sad lack of principle, doubtless an
heritage from her heathen father.

On the afternoons of Tuesdays and Wednesdays, she hoped to help in some
house with the cleaning, or in some slattern's abode with the weekly
wash, for, as all know, there are some such sluts that the washing gets
put off from day to day, till Saturday finds it still cluttering the
washhouse instead of being brought in clean and sweet from the
gorse-bushes.

Then there were always odd things to be done, such as running errands,
at which she hoped to earn some pence here and there. The white riband
seemed no impossible fantasy to Loveday when she started on her quest.

She went first to visit old Mrs. Lear, at Upper Farm, for no one had
shown such a kindly front to the girl in all the village as she. Loveday
started out for the milk half-an-hour earlier than was her wont so that
she might have time to discuss her hopes with the farmer's wife, and
this time she did not meet young Mrs. Lear or her friend Cherry on the
way. But she did come upon both Mrs. Lears in the big kitchen, the
younger