Young ladies in villages--gentry--usually visited the cottagers a bit if they were well-meaning young women--left good books and broth or jelly, pottered about and were seen at church, and playing croquet, and finally married and removed to other places, or gradually faded year by year into respectable spinsterhood.

And this one comes in, and in two or three minutes shows that she knows things about the place and understands.

A man might then take it for granted that she would understand the thing he daringly gathered courage to say.
"They want any work, miss--that they are sure of decent pay for--sure of it." She did understand.

And she did not treat his implication as an impertinence.

She knew it was not intended as one, and, indeed, she saw in it a sort of earnest of a possible practical quality in Buttle.
Such work as the Court had demanded had remained unpaid for with quiet persistence, until even bills had begun to lag and fall off.