Word: aslett
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Last October while I was in London I talked to my aunt on the telephone. A week or so earlier my grandmother had rung for Mrs. Aslett to ask when exactly she was planning to quit working full-time. Mrs. Aslett seemed to shrink even smaller, and replied, "Well, Lady Dyson...
...years I spend a bit of time seeing my grandmother and my aunt, who live in a big house in Winchester about 50 miles from London. My grandmother is no rich, but my grandfather was a knight, and so she has a certain position to maintain. For years Mrs. Aslett (or perhaps it was Haslett: no one know) has come in every day except Sunday to cock and clean, My grandmother is fond of her in an irritated sort of way: "She's a good soul, but she does creep about the house...
...Aslett is the ultimate in Victorian self-effacement. She never speaks above a whisper, and to call us to dinner--at one O'clock promptly--she rings a tiny bell. She spends much of the morning in the kitchen, making roly-poly puddings and custard, toads-in-the-hole, and blancmange. If I go through the kitchen about lunchtime the greed walls are sweating fiercely, little runnels of steam trickling down near the stove, and Mrs. Aslett shuffles around in her pink apron, flushed and almost cheerful in her work...
Last year my grandmother had written to us that Mrs. Aslett was leaving: "She'll be sixty-five in December and she wants to retire on her State pension. What we shall do then I've not decided. Funny old thing. I expect she'll find life quite dull! She's already told me she'd still like to come in once or twice a week anyway, but no more, because then she should have to forfeit part of the pension...
Alice, my aunt, was called in, and finally Mrs. Aslett mumbled her explanation. The week before she had gathered up all the proper papers and gone into the local government office to see about getting herself registered for a pension come December. "The man there," she said, "he looked at my papers...
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