Borrowers were another nuisance. Most of the women borrowed at some time, and a few families lived entirely on borrowing the day before pay-day. There would come a shy, low-down, little knock at the door, and when it was opened, a child’s voice would say, “Oh, please Mrs. So-and-So, could you oblige me mother with a spoonful of tea [or a cup of sugar, or half a loaf] till me Dad gets his money?” If the required article could not be spared at the first house, she would go from door to door repeating her request until she got what she wanted, for such were her instructions.

The borrowings were usually repaid, or there would soon have been nowhere to borrow from; but often an insufficient quantity or an inferior quality were returned, and the result was a smouldering resentment against the habitual borrowers. But no word of direct complaint was uttered. Had it been, the borrower might have taken offence, and the women wished above all things to be on good terms with their neighbours.

Laura’s mother detested the borrowing habit. She said that when she had first set up housekeeping she had made it her rule when a borrower came to the door to say, “Tell your mother I never borrow myself and I never lend. But here’s the tea. I don’t want it back again. Tell your mother she’s welcome to it.” The plan did not work. The same borrower came again and again, until she had to say, “Tell your mother I must have it back this time.” Again the plan did not work. Laura once heard her mother say to Queenie, “Here’s half a loaf, Queenie, if it’s any good to you. But I won’t deceive you about it; it’s one that Mrs. Knowles sent back that she’d borrowed from me, and I can’t fancy it myself, out of her house. If you don’t have it, it’ll have to go in the pig-tub.”

“That’s all right, me dear,” was Queenie’s smiling response. “It’ll do fine for our Tom’s tea. He won’t know where it’s been, an’ ‘ould’nt care if he did. All he cares about’s a full belly.”

However, there were other friends and neighbours to whom it was a pleasure to lend, or to give on the rare occasions when that was possible. They seldom asked directly for a loan, but would say, “My poor old tea-caddy’s empty,” or “I ain’t got a mossel o’ bread till the baker comes.” They spoke of this kind of approach as a nint and said that if anybody liked to take it they could; if not, no harm was done, for they hadn’t demeaned themselves by asking.