noon
Everyone who knew Mary Beechinor , in her cousin 's home , or at chapel , or on Titus Price 's earthenware manufactory , where she worked , said or thought that ` there was something about her ... ' and left the phrase unachieved . She was twenty-five , and she had lived under the same roof with Edward Beechinor for seven years , since the sudden death of her parents . The arrangement then made was that Edward should keep her , while she conducted his household . She had insisted on permission to follow her own occupation , and in order that she might be at liberty to do so she personally paid eighteenpence a week to a little girl who came in to perform sundry necessary duties every day at noon . Mary Beechinor was a paintress by trade . As a class the paintresses of the Five Towns are somewhat similar to the more famous mill-girls of Lancashire and Yorkshire -- fiercely independent by reason of good wages earned , loving finery and brilliant colours , loud-tongued and aggressive , perhaps , and for the rest neither more nor less kindly , passionate , faithful , than any other Saxon women anywhere . The paintresses , however , have some slight advantage over the mill-girls in the outward reticences of demeanour , due no doubt to the fact that their ancient craft demands a higher skill , and is pursued under more humane and tranquil conditions .