went every Monday. And what could she do with two little children on her
hands? But Ted's mother was very good to her. When the baby could toddle
she'd keep both the children for the day, while she, Ivy Bolton, went to
Sheffield, and attended classes in ambulance, and then the fourth year she
even took a nursing course and got qualified. She was determined to be
independent and keep her children. So she was assistant at Uthwaite
hospital, just a little place, for a while. But when the Company, the
Tevershall Colliery Company, really Sir Geoffrey, saw that she could get on
by herself, they were very good to her, gave her the parish nursing, and
stood by her, she would say that for them. And she'd done it ever since,
till now it was getting a bit much for her; she needed something a bit
lighter, there was such a lot of traipsing around if you were a district
nurse.
`Yes, the Company's been very good to me, I always say it. But I should
never forget what they said about Ted, for he was as steady and fearless a
chap as ever set foot on the cage, and it was as good as branding him a
coward. But there, he was dead, and could say nothing to none of 'em.'
It was a queer mixture of feelings the woman showed as she talked. She
liked the colliers, whom she had nursed for so long; but she felt very
superior to them. She felt almost upper class; and at the same time a
resentment against the ruling class smouldered in her. The masters! In a
dispute between masters and men, she was always for the men. But when there
was no question of contest, she was pining to be superior, to be one of the
upper class. The upper classes fascinated her, appealing to her peculiar
English passion for superiority. She was thrilled to come to Wragby;
thrilled to talk to Lady Chatterley, my word, different from the common
colliers' wives! She said so in so many words. Yet one could see a grudge
against the Chatterleys peep out in her; the grudge against the masters.
`Why, yes, of course, it would wear Lady Chatterley out! It's a mercy
she had a sister to come and help her. Men don't think, high and low-alike,
they take what a woman does for them for granted. Oh, I've told the colliers
off about it many a time. But it's very hard for Sir Clifford, you know,
crippled like that. They were always a haughty family, standoffish in a way,
as they've a right to be. But then to be brought down like that! And it's
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