’
Dorothy did not answer Her conscience had given her another and harder
jab-she had remembered those wretched, unmade jackboots, and the fact that
at least one of them had got to be made tonight She was, however, unbearably
tired She had had an exhausting afternoon, starting off with ten miles or so
bicycling to and fro in the sun, delivering the parish magazine, and continuing
with the Mothers’ Union tea in the hot little wooden-walled room behind the
parish hall The Mothers met every Wednesday afternoon to have tea and do
some charitable sewing while Dorothy read aloud to them (At present she was
reading Gene Stratton Porter’s A Girl of the Limberlosl ) It was nearly always
upon Dorothy that jobs of that kind devolved, because the phalanx of devoted
women (the church fowls, they are called) who do the dirty work of most
parishes had dwindled at Knype Hill to four or five at most The only helper on
whom Dorothy ^ould count at all regularly was Miss Foote, a tall, rabbit-
faced, dithering virgin of thirty-five, who meant well but made a mess of
everything and was in a perpetual state of flurry Mr Warburton used to say
that she reminded him of a comet- ‘a ridiculous blunt-nosed creature rushing
round on an eccentric orbit and always a little behind time’ You could trust
Miss Foote with the church decorations, but not with the Mothers or the
Sunday School, because, though a regular churchgoer, her orthodoxy was
suspect She had confided to Dorothy that she could worship God best under
the blue dome of the sky After tea Dorothy had dashed up to the church to put
fresh flowers on the altar, and then she had typed out her sermon-her
typewriter was a rickety pre-Boer War ‘invisible’, on which you couldn’t
A Clergyman’s Daughter 299
average eight hundred words an hour-and after supper she had weeded the
pea rows until the light failed and her back seemed to be breaking With one
thing and another, she was even more tired than usual
‘I really must be getting home,’ she repeated more firmly ‘I’m sure it’s
getting fearfully late ’
‘Home?
Dorothy did not answer Her conscience had given her another and harder
jab-she had remembered those wretched, unmade jackboots, and the fact that
at least one of them had got to be made tonight She was, however, unbearably
tired She had had an exhausting afternoon, starting off with ten miles or so
bicycling to and fro in the sun, delivering the parish magazine, and continuing
with the Mothers’ Union tea in the hot little wooden-walled room behind the
parish hall The Mothers met every Wednesday afternoon to have tea and do
some charitable sewing while Dorothy read aloud to them (At present she was
reading Gene Stratton Porter’s A Girl of the Limberlosl ) It was nearly always
upon Dorothy that jobs of that kind devolved, because the phalanx of devoted
women (the church fowls, they are called) who do the dirty work of most
parishes had dwindled at Knype Hill to four or five at most The only helper on
whom Dorothy ^ould count at all regularly was Miss Foote, a tall, rabbit-
faced, dithering virgin of thirty-five, who meant well but made a mess of
everything and was in a perpetual state of flurry Mr Warburton used to say
that she reminded him of a comet- ‘a ridiculous blunt-nosed creature rushing
round on an eccentric orbit and always a little behind time’ You could trust
Miss Foote with the church decorations, but not with the Mothers or the
Sunday School, because, though a regular churchgoer, her orthodoxy was
suspect She had confided to Dorothy that she could worship God best under
the blue dome of the sky After tea Dorothy had dashed up to the church to put
fresh flowers on the altar, and then she had typed out her sermon-her
typewriter was a rickety pre-Boer War ‘invisible’, on which you couldn’t
A Clergyman’s Daughter 299
average eight hundred words an hour-and after supper she had weeded the
pea rows until the light failed and her back seemed to be breaking With one
thing and another, she was even more tired than usual
‘I really must be getting home,’ she repeated more firmly ‘I’m sure it’s
getting fearfully late ’
‘Home?
Orwell - A Clergyman's Daughter
