She quite put on her company manners to receive Ruth in the kitchen.

They laid Leonard to sleep on the sofa in the parlour, that they might hear him the more easily, and then they sat quietly down to their sewing by the bright kitchen fire.

Sally was, as usual, the talker; and, as usual, the subject was the family of whom for so many years she had formed a part.
"Aye! things was different when I was a girl," quoth she.

"Eggs was thirty for a shilling, and butter only sixpence a pound.

My wage when I came here was but three pound, and I did on it, and was always clean and tidy, which is more than many a lass can say now who gets her seven and eight pound a year; and tea was kept for an afternoon drink, and pudding was eaten afore meat in them days, and the upshot was, people paid their debts better; aye, aye! we'n gone backwards, and we thinken we'n gone forrards." After shaking her head a little over the degeneracy of the times, Sally returned to a part of the subject on which she thought she had given Ruth a wrong idea.
"You'll not go for to think now that I've not more than three pound a year.