One August Sunday afternoon, Mrs. King was with Alfred while Ellen was at church.  He was lying on his couch, very uncomfortable and fretful, when to the surprise of both, a knock was heard at the door.  Mrs. King looked out of the window, and a smart, hard-looking, pigeon’s-neck silk bonnet at once nodded to her, and a voice said, ’I’ve come over to see you, Cousin King, if you’ll come down and let me in.  I knew I should find you at home.’

‘Betsey Hardman!’ exclaimed Alfred, in dismay; ’you won’t let her come up here, Mother?’

‘Not if I can help it,’ said Mrs. King, sighing.  If there were a thing she disliked above all others, it was Sunday visiting.

‘You must help it, Mother,’ said Alfred, in his most pettish tones.  ’I won’t have her here, worrying with her voice like a hen cackling.  Say you won’t let her come her!’

‘Very well,’ said Mrs. King, in doubt of her own powers, and in haste to be decently civil.

‘Say you won’t,’ repeated Alfred.  ’Gadding about of a Sunday, and leaving her old sick mother—­more shame for her!  Promise, Mother!’

He had nearly begun to cry at his mother’s unkindness in running down-stairs without making the promise, for, in fact, Mrs. King had too much conscience to gain present quiet for any one by promises she might be forced to break; and Betsey Hardman was only too well known.

Her mother was an aunt of Alfred’s father, an old decrepit widow, nearly bed-ridden, but pretty well to do, by being maintained chiefly by her daughter, who made a good thing of taking in washing in the suburbs of Elbury, and always had a girl or two under her.  She had neither had the education, nor the good training in service, that had fallen to Mrs. King’s lot; and her way of life did not lead to softening her tongue or temper.  Ellen called her vulgar, and though that is not a nice word to use, she was coarse in her ways of talking and thinking, loud-voiced, and unmannerly, although meaning to be very good-natured.

Alfred lay in fear of her step, ten times harder than Harold’s in his most boisterous mood, coming clamp clamp! up the stairs; and her shrill voice—­the same tone in which she bawled to her deaf mother, and hallooed to her girls when they were hanging out the clothes in the high wind—­coming pitying him—­ay, and perhaps her whole weight lumbering down on the couch beside him, shaking every joint in his body!  His mother’s ways, learnt in the Selby nursery, had made him more tender, and more easily fretted by such things, than most cottage lads, who would have been used to them, and never have thought of not liking to have every neighbour who chose running up into the room, and talking without regard to subject or tone.

He listened in a fright to the latch of the door, and the coming in.  Betsey’s voice came up, through every chink of the boards, whatever she did herself; and he could hear every word of her greeting, as she said how it was such a fine day, she said to Mother she would take a holiday, and come and see Cousin King and the poor lad:  it must be mighty dull for him, moped up there.