Every few days, when they were out in the town, they would call at Aunt Edith’s, at their Aunt Ann’s request, “in case she should be hurt, if neglected.” Uncle James would be about his business; the girls were away on a visit, and even Aunt Edith herself would often be out shopping, or at a sewing party, or gone to the dressmaker’s. Then Bertha would take them straight through to her kitchen and give them cups of milk in order to detain them, for although so silent as to be thought simple in the presence of the elders, with the children alone she became talkative. What did Molly, or Nellie, think of so-and-so, which had happened in the town? What was Mr. Snellgrave up to when he fell down those stone steps? “Was he a bit tight, think you?” She had heard, though it wouldn’t do for Master to know, that he called at the “Crown” for his glass every night, and him a sides man and all. Still, it might, as Molly suggested, have been that the steps were slippery after the shower. But you couldn’t help thinking! And had they heard that her Ladyship up at Bartons was getting up one of these new fancy bazaars? It was to be held in the picture gallery and anybody could go in who cared to pay sixpence; but she expected they’d have to buy something—crocheted shawls and hand-painted plates and pincushions and hair-tidies—all given by the gentry to sell for the heathens. “No, not the Candleford heathens. Don’t be cheeky, young Nell. The heathen blacks, who all run naked in foreign parts, like they have the collection for in church on missionary Sundays. I expect the Mis’is will go and your mother and some of you. They say there’s tea going to be sold at sixpence a cup. Robbery, I call it! but there’s them as’d pay as much as a pound only to get their noses inside Bartons, let alone sitting down and drinking tea with the nobs.”

Bertha was not above school gossip, either. She took great interest in children’s squabbles, children’s tea parties and children’s holidays. “There, did you ever!—I wonder, now, at that!” she would ejaculate on hearing the most commonplace tittle-tattle and remember it and comment on it long after the squabble had been made up and the party forgotten by all but her.