Posted by Jon on September 18, 2000 at 14:21:19 from 199.158.80.11:
In Reply to: Re: PM-Beckfoot servants. posted by Robert Hill on September 15, 2000 at 14:55:51:
"My copy of Swallowdale is not to hand, but my recollection is that the housemaid is mentioned only once in the book, when Nancy tells the Swallows that she (the maid) celebrated the GA's departure by dancing a jig. This is hard to reconcile with the idea that she was only hired for the GA's visits. If she seriously needed the money, she would have been unhappy at losing the work; if not, she wouldn't have taken it on in the first place."
I would see her as a local girl hired on to help out for the duration, looking to see if she would want to make a career of it, and to acquire some references. If she saw the GA as typical, that would quite adequately explain her departure from the scene.
The mine was evidently doing well enough at the time of PM for them to be opening new shafts and doing assays on the ore from them. The scale of the operation throughout suggests that Jim Turner, if not Timothy Steddings, saw the mine almost as a hobby since we know from PP and SW that the first vein was of high quality ore.