Chapter 24

Mrs Hughes was sewing by candlelight at her desk in her sitting room. Lady Sybil's collar was well and truly ruined and the little girl didn't want to part with her dress. Therefore Mrs Hughes undertook the task of mending the dress for her. Her Ladyship had insisted that it should not be mended as punishment for Sybil's carelessness but Mrs Hughes managed to gently coax Lady Grantham to allow her to mend it.

That was how Mrs Hughes found herself replacing the collar of the pretty purple and white flowered dress after almost everyone had gone to bed. Mr Carson was held up in the drawing room after dinner and Mrs Hughes occupied herself with the dress to pass the time despite the strain it would leave on her eyes. It was becoming almost impossible to see the white thread upon the white collar and she was considering giving it a rest for the night when a familiar knock sounded on her door follow by its opening. Mr Carson walked in with a half filed decanter and two glasses.

"His Lordship just went to bed. I was quite afraid he never would," he said as he set the glasses and the decanter down on the small table the desk. "Looks like you've kept yourself occupied since it seemed as if I was never coming," he commented eyeing the dress in Mrs Hughes' hands.

"I was in fact considering going to bed," Mrs Hughes replied, giving a few final stitches to the collar, bringing it a bit more close to her eyes against the dim yellow light.

"That… doesn't seem like something I am accustomed to see you sew," Mr Carson commented, hopelessly curious.

"I doubt you've seen me mind anything besides black. Save the occasional dress of Her Ladyship's," Mrs Hughes replied laughing as she cut the thread with a pair of scissors and pinned the needle down on a pretty little pin cushion.

"I… I didn't mean to pry. It's just that I've noticed," Mr Carson said looking down, suddenly feeling very embarrassed.

"It's Lady Sybil's," she replied with a smile amused by his adorable embarrassed look, "I am well past the age of wearing these," she said holding up the pretty dress and Mr Carson laughed at the mischievous expression on her face.

"You'd have looked pretty at her age in a dress like that," he said without thinking and suddenly felt even more embarrassed. It always escaped him how he would always ask her a very personal question and then realise that it was wrong of him when it was much late and the damage, if any, would have already been done.

"I didn't own such pretty colours when I was young. Nothing this bright at all. Besides it wasn't much about the colour but durability, ability to stand the weather. And that and colour was never a feasible combination," Mrs Hughes said as she looked longingly at the dress.

It wasn't entirely about the durability or the weather. She couldn't tell him that. Being a farmer's daughter, pretty fabrics were beyond her. And she never begged her parents for a pretty dress ever in her life. She was happy with the dull coloured hardy fabrics she got for dresses, with tight sleeves and skirts never full as she would have liked them to be. Elsie couldn't help the slight pang of jealousy seeing the other girls wear pretty dresses to church. But she contended herself thinking that despite their pretty frocks none of them did well at Mathematics as well as she did.

When she became housemaid, she was proud of the pretty apron she got to wear. With pretty frills and plenty of pleats. When she became Housekeeper, the allowance she got for her uniforms seemed like a luxury. Intricate lace and the cheaper brocade, despite being black, seemed like the best satin and silk in the world for the farmer's daughter who grew up with cheap cotton, rough wool and the occasional wincey.

Seeing Mrs Hughes watching the dress so longingly, Mr Carson felt that he might have involuntarily hit a nerve. He knew she was a farm girl and she rarely spoke of tales of her childhood save the occasional few about the antics she got up to as a cheeky young girl. But never of what things were like at home. He assumed it must have been a life of hardships. His father on the contrary was Head Groom to the then Earl of Grantham. His childhood wasn't luxurious but it was comfortable. Much more than hers would have been, he imagined.

"Might I ask how you found yourself mending it?" he asked eager to deviate the Housekeeper from whatever nostalgia or longing that seemed to occupy her at that moment and also owing to his curiosity peaked by eyeing the tattered piece of white clothing, which assumed was a collar she was replacing, lying next to her sewing box, on top of her pin cushion.

"Lady Sybil took a fall on the gravel near the front door," she replied smiling at the memory of the bloodied and dishevelled girl looking at her like a puppy dog found guilty of pinching a bone from the kitchens.

"How on earth?" Mr Carson almost bellowed in surprise.

"She's gone to see the butterflies and when she came running back she has twisted her leg," she said and slightly raised her hand to stop him when he tried to interrupt, "Yes, yes she's alright. Just some bruises and a few wounds. The one on the forehead's a bit deep though, I suppose. But it isn't bad. Give it a week and it will heal completely."

"You mean you nursed her without calling for the doctor?" he asked quite agitated by that point. To him, it was certainly very improper and highly careless of her for not calling the doctor in a matter of an illness of a member of the family, regardless of how mild it may be.

"It was just a fall Mr Carson. She fell straight on her face. She's not taken it to the back of her head, then you'll have me worried about it. This is the sort of thing children get into. The same sort of thing you and I would have got into back we were running about," Mrs Hughes emphasized trying to show the Butler some reason. She knew how high and mighty he got about these things. She even wondered if he possibly thinks of the girls as fully grown young ladies in all grace and glamour.

"But she's not you or I, is she?" he cross questioned a Housekeeper whose shimmering coals from morning were beginning to turn bright red.

"She is a child Mr Carson. Just a child. Give it at least a ten more years before she'll have to walk with a head held high, hands in front and doing embroidery in the day," she argued. Her voice strong, but her eyes pleading.

"What if she had hurt herself too badly?"

"I warned her about being more careful. And if she didn't buy it from me she would have certainly from Her Ladyship. She's a little bird, that one. You can't picture her cooped up in one place like the Blessed Lady Mary," she began with the tone from earlier, "besides in a few more years, that girl would be gone. Turned into a Lady. The real and proper kind. And I daresay when that happens I'll miss the little girl whose turns up in here out of nowhere, aiming to fish out my jar of chocolate cookies," she finished on a softer tone, a smile gracing her face as she looked up at the top drawer where the aforementioned jar was stored.

Mr Carson watched her while her eyes were fixed elsewhere. Her temperament was a lovely and welcome contrast to what it was all morning. Gentle with a strong dose of strength, like the shadows that played across her face in the candlelight. The blue of her eyes had dulled in the yellow light but the same light complimented the waves and the shade of her beautiful hair. Her cheekbones stared at him with the same severity and sharpness she wore in her eyes. Everything of her was just like who she was. Precise. And like many an evening before he got drunk in what was Elsie Hughes.

TO BE CONTINUED…

It was quite tricky to write this chapter and I guess it would tricky for a few more chapters to come. Thank you again for your kind reviews. They keep me motivated and make me happy. I hope you enjoyed this chapter and please let me know what you thought of it and the story so far, in the reviews. I would be so glad and grateful if you do. See you soon with a new chapter! (I have also published chapters of this story quite regularly than usual so please check out if you have missed any of those chapters. Thanks again!)