His cart had gone out on a round just before Miss Fox-Seton's arrival, and there was no knowing when it would return.
"Then I must carry the fish myself," said Emily.

"You can put it in a neat basket." "I'm very sorry, miss; I am, indeed, miss," said Batch, looking hot and pained.
"It will not be heavy," returned Emily; "and her ladyship must be sure of it for the dinner-party." So she turned back to recross the moor with a basket of fish on her arm.
And she was so pathetically unhappy that she felt that so long as she lived the odour of fresh fish would make her feel sorrowful.

She had heard of people who were made sorrowful by the odour of a flower or the sound of a melody but in her case it would be the smell of fresh fish that would make her sad.

If she had been a person with a sense of humour, she might have seen that this was thing to laugh at a little.
But she was not a humorous woman, and just now---- "Oh, I shall have to find a new place," she was thinking, "and I have lived in that little room for years." The sun got hotter and hotter, and her feet became so tired that she could scarcely drag one of them after another.

She had forgotten that she had left Mallowe before lunch, and that she ought to have got a cup of tea, at least, at Maundell.