‘I’ve been put to great embarrassment,’ she went on before they could open their mouths, glaring at Ellie.
‘It was understood yesterday was your day off and I naturally took it Mrs Lowe gave your sister permission too, but that don’t seem to have been the case. Who did? Speak up!’ The sharp command made Dora flinch, but Ellie stood her ground.
‘It was Doctor Lowe. I asked if he minded us having our day off together and he didn’t make no objection.’
‘You asked the master…’ Words almost failed Mrs Jenkins, but not for long. ‘You went to him personally? How dare you, girl! You go through me in these matters. And if I’d known it was the two of you I would’ve said no – definitely no!’
‘I didn’t go to him,’ Ellie protested. ‘He spoke to me as he came out of his doctor’s surgery. He said it was time I ’ad me day off, so I asked if my sister could ’ave her day off as well and he said he saw no harm in it. So—’
The rest was cut short by Mrs Jenkins shaking a fist at her. ‘That’s enough! Your sister answers to Mrs Lowe and should have gone to her for permission.’
‘It all ’appened sudden, Cook,’ Ellie said, leaning back from the angry gesture. ‘I was off to bed. When Dora said the mistress would be out visiting the next day and wouldn’t be back till six o’clock and wouldn’t need her, I thought that was why the master said we could.’
It was no lie. It was how it had come about: a misunderstanding. But Ellie was already seeing her and Dora’s employment here being terminated, her hopes of a good future dwindling. She needed desperately to put things right.
Next morning, despite Mrs Jenkins’s warning that all requests must go through her, Ellie took her time cleaning out the grate and laying and lighting the fire in Doctor Lowe’s study. There were questions she needed to ask the man; the business of her and Dora’s day out together was now the least of her concerns.
His coming into his study, something he always did prior to his having breakfast, finally rewarded her slowness. Seeing her still there, he hesitated at the door, but to her relief came on into the room.
She stood up and bobbed. ‘Good morning, sir.’
He was smiling. ‘Good morning, my dear.’
The ‘my dear’ took her completely by surprise. Yesterday, around mid-morning, his wife had spoken to Mrs Jenkins to say that from now on Ellie and Florrie would be addressed only by surname. Florrie would be addressed as Chambers and Ellie as Jay. So his calling her ‘my dear’ so soon after his wife’s request took Ellie aback a bit.
In larger houses with an army of servants everyone would answer to their surname, even among the servants themselves. The upper orders would address the lower ones this way, while they would require to have Mr or Miss attached to theirs, and cooks and housekeepers were Mrs, whether married or single.
In this house, with only four staff, this had never been the case, apart from with Mrs Jenkins herself. Now, suddenly, Doctor Lowe’s wife had issued an edict that Ellie was to be referred to as Jay, and Florrie as Chambers.
But to Ellie’s astonishment and anger her own sister would now be addressed as Miss Jay, since Mrs Lowe had also given out yesterday that Dora was now officially her personal maid – a kid of thirteen!
Ellie had been incensed. ‘I’m not calling my own sister “Miss Jay”!’ she raged when Cook relayed the mistress’s orders. ‘My own sister? It’s daft!’
‘Maybe,’ Mrs Jenkins said sternly. ‘But the mistress is the mistress and what she says goes.’
‘Well, I ain’t doing it.’
‘You can call her Dora when you two are alone. Just not in public, that’s all.’
Then last night had come a second shock as she and Dora lay side by side in their narrow bed. When they would normally have gossiped together in whispers about their day, Dora had been silent. Asked what was wrong, she had given several damp sniffs accompanied by little catches in her throat.
‘I won’t be sleeping here any more,’ she’d managed between snivels. ‘Mrs Lowe wants me to use the little room next to hers where I can be on hand. She says that a personal maid is elev— elevated, I think the word was – above ordinary servants. She said my wages will go up, but that I’m not to con— er… consort socially with you any more, because you’re under-housemaid and ladies’ maids don’t associate with under-housemaids.’
As the gabbled whispers died away, Ellie had said, stunned, ‘You’re not having that, are you?’
Dora had given an enormous damp sniff. ‘If I don’t, she says she’ll be ever so sad to have to let me go. Ellie, where would I go? I’d be all on my own.’
‘You won’t be on your own. I’ll hand in my notice and leave with you.’
Dora had shot up in the bed, making the flimsy thing creak and sway. ‘But we’d be out on the street, back where we was. That’ll be just as bad. Ellie, I couldn’t face that. We’re comfy here. We’ve got a roof over our heads and plenty to eat and it’s warm and we get a wage.’
Ellie hadn’t felt sympathetic. ‘So you’re going to accept.’
‘I’ve got to. Mrs Lowe says she wants to show me how to be a lady and speak nice… nicely.’ Indeed her diction had improved since being with Mrs Lowe, but at this moment was letting her down.
‘And I want to do that,’ she’d gone on, gazing down at her sister still lying on her back. ‘But I don’t want to be parted from you. I’ll be on my own. I won’t have no friends, not even Florrie.’
Florrie, deaf to their hissed discussion, was snoring contentedly.
‘Because someone in my position,’ Dora had gone on, ‘won’t be allowed to
