to do things for her as if she had neither hands
nor feet of her own.

"Why doesn't tha' put on tha' own shoes?"
she said when Mary quietly held out her foot.

"My Ayah did it," answered Mary, staring.
"It was the custom."

She said that very often -- "It was the custom."
The native servants were always saying it. If one
told them to do a thing their ancestors had not
done for a thousand years they gazed at one mildly
and said, "It is not the custom" and one knew
that was the end of the matter.

It had not been the custom that Mistress Mary
should do anything but stand and allow herself
to be dressed like a doll, but before she was ready
for breakfast she began to suspect that her life at
Misselthwaite Manor would end by teaching her
a number of things quite new to her -- things
such as putting on her own shoes and stockings, and
picking up things she let fall. If Martha had
been a well-trained fine young lady's maid she
would have been more subservient and respectful
and would have known that it was her business to
brush hair, and button boots, and pick things up
and lay them away. She was, however, only an untrained
Yorkshire rustic who had been brought up
in a moorland cottage with a swarm of little

[[37]]

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