"Well, for you, Mum, I'll see if it can't be managed.Difficult as it is."Grace's anger boiled over.
"That woman must go," she insisted.
"Very well," said Maggie.
Cook after cook appeared and vanished.They all hated Grace.
"You're not very good at keeping servants, are you, Maggie, dear?"said Grace.
Then there was the shopping.Grace's conversation was the real trouble here.Grace's stories had seemed rather a joke in London, soon, in Skeaton, they became a torture.From the vicarage to the High Street was not far, but it was far enough for Grace's narrative powers to stretch their legs and get a healthy appetite for the day's work.Grace walked very slowly, because of her painful breathing.Her stout stolid figure in its stiff clothes (the skirt rather short, thick legs in black stockings and large flat boots), marched along.She had a peculiar walk, planting each foot on the ground with deliberate determination as though she were squashing a malignant beetle, she was rather short-sighted, but did not wear glasses, because, as she said to Maggie, "one need not look peculiar until one must." Her favourite head-gear was a black straw hat with a rather faded black ribbon and a huge pin stuck skewer-wise into it.This pin was like a dagger.
She peered around her as she walked, and for ever enquired of Maggie, "who that was on the other Bide of the road." Maggie, of course, did not know, and there began then a long cross-questioning as to colour, clothes, height, smile or frown.Nothing was too small to catch Grace's interest but nothing caught it for long.Maggie, at the end of her walk felt as though she were beset by a whirl of little buzzing flies.She noticed that Paul had, from, long habit, learnt to continue his own thoughts during Grace's stories, and she also tried to do this, but she was not clever at it because Grace would suddenly stop and say, "Where was I, Maggie?" and then when Maggie was confused regard her suspiciously, narrowing her eyes into little thin points.The shopping was difficult because Grace would stand at Maggie's elbow and say: "Now, Maggie, this is your affair, isn't it? You decide what you want," and then when Maggie had decided, Grace simply, to show her power, would say: "Oh, I don't think we'd better have that...No, I don't think we'll have that.