FullReads

“There’s a wonderful old man lives here,” said Miss Amelyn, as they halted before a stone and thatch cottage quite on the outskirts of the village. “We can’t call him one of our poor, for he still works, although over eighty, and it’s his pride to keep out of the poorhouse, and, as he calls it, ‘off’ the hands of his granddaughters. But we manage to do something for THEM, and we hope he profits by it. One of them is at the Priory; they’re trying to make a maid of her, but her queer accent–they’re from the north–is against her with the servants. I am afraid we won’t see old Debs, for he’s at work again to-day, though the doctor has warned him.”

“Debs! What a funny name!”

“Yes, but as many of these people cannot read or write, the name is carried by the ear, and not always correctly. Some of the railway navvies, who come from the north as he does, call him ‘Debbers.'”

They were obliged to descend into the cottage, which was so low that it seemed to have sunk into the earth until its drooping eaves of thatch mingled with the straw heap beside it. Debs was not at home. But his granddaughter was there, who, after a preliminary “bob,” continued the stirring of the pot before the fire in tentative silence.

“I am sorry to find that your grandfather has gone to work again in spite of the doctor’s orders,” said Miss Amelyn.

The girl continued to stir the pot, and then said without looking up, but as if also continuing a train of aggressive thoughts with her occupation: “Eay, but ‘e’s so set oop in ‘issen ‘ee doan’t take orders from nobbut–leastways doctor. Moinds ’em now moor nor a floy. Says ‘ee knaws there nowt wrong wi’ ‘is ‘eart. Mout be roight–how’siver, sarten sewer, ‘is ‘EAD’S a’ in a muddle! Toims ‘ee goes off stamrin’ and starin’ at nowt, as if ‘ee a’nt a n’aporth o’ sense. How’siver I be doing my duty by ’em–and ‘ere’s ‘is porritch when a’ cooms–‘gin a’ be sick or maad.”

What the American understood of the girl’s speech and manner struck her as having very little sympathy with either her aged relative or her present visitor. And there was a certain dogged selfish independence about her that Miss Desborough half liked and half resented. However, Miss Amelyn did not seem to notice it, and, after leaving a bottle of port for the grandfather, she took her leave and led Sadie away. As they passed into the village a carriage, returning to the Priory, filled with their fellow guests, dashed by, but was instantly pulled up at a word from Lord Algernon, who leaped from the vehicle, hat in hand, and implored the fair truant and her companion to join them.

“We’re just making a tour around Windover Hill, and back to luncheon,” he said, with a rising color. “We missed you awfully! If we had known you were so keen on ‘good works,’ and so early at it, by Jove! we’d have got up a ‘slummin’ party,’ and all joined!”

“And you haven’t seen half,” said Lord Beverdale from the box. “Miss Amelyn’s too partial to the village. There’s an old drunken retired poacher somewhere in a hut in Crawley Woods, whom it’s death to approach, except with a large party. There’s malignant diphtheria over at the South Farm, eight down with measles at the keeper’s, and an old woman who has been bedridden for years.”

But Miss Desborough was adamant, though sparkling. She thanked him, but said she had just seen an old woman “who had been lying in bed for twenty years, and hadn’t spoken the truth once!” She proposed “going outside of Lord Beverdale’s own preserves of grain-fed poor,” and starting up her own game. She would return in time for luncheon–if she could; if not, she “should annex the gruel of the first kind incapable she met.”