"A house this size and of this poverty in an American village," was Betty's thought, "would be a bare and straggling hideousness, with old tomato cans in the front yard.Here is one of the things we have to learn from them."When she knocked at the door an old woman opened it.
She was a well-preserved and markedly respectable old person, in a decent print frock and a cap.At the sight of her visitor she beamed and made a suggestion of curtsey.
"How do you do, Mrs.Welden?" said Betty."I am Lady Anstruthers' sister, Miss Vanderpoel.I thought I would like to come and see you.""Thank you, miss, I am obliged for the kindness, miss.
Won't you come in and have a chair?"
There were no signs of decrepitude about her, and she had a cheery old eye.The tiny front room was neat, though there was scarcely space enough in it to contain the table covered with its blue-checked cotton cloth, the narrow sofa, and two or three chairs.There were a few small coloured prints, and a framed photograph or so on the walls, and on the table was a Bible, and a brown earthenware teapot, and a plate.
"Tom Wood's wife, that's neighbour next door to me," she said, "gave me a pinch o' tea--an' I've just been 'avin it.
Tom Woods, miss, 'as just been took on by Muster Kedgers as one of the new under gardeners at the Court."Betty found her delightful.She made no complaints, and was evidently pleased with the excitement of receiving a visitor.The truth was, that in common with every other old woman, she had secretly aspired to being visited some day by the amazing young lady from "Meriker." Betty had yet to learn of the heartburnings which may be occasioned by an unconscious favouritism.She was not aware that when she dropped in to talk to old Doby, his neighbour, old Megworth, peered from behind his curtains, with the dew of envy in his rheumy eyes.
"S'ems," he mumbled, "as if they wasn't nobody now in Stornham village but Gaarge Doby--s'ems not." They were very fierce in their jealousy of attention, and one must beware of rousing evil passions in the octogenarian breast.
The young lady from "Meriker" had not so far had time to make a call at any cottage in old Mrs.Welden's lane--and she had knocked just at old Mrs.Welden's door.This was enough to put in good spirits even a less cheery old person.
At first Betty wondered how she could with delicacy ask personal questions.A few minutes' conversation, however, showed her that the personal affairs of Sir Nigel's tenants were also the affairs of not only himself, but of such of his relatives as attended to their natural duty.Her presence in the cottage, and her interest in Mrs.Welden's ready flow of simple talk, were desirable and proper compliments to the old woman herself.She was a decent and self-respecting old person, but in her mind there was no faintest glimmer of resentment of questions concerning rent and food and the needs of her simple, hard-driven existence.She had answered such questions on many occasions, when they had not been asked in the manner in which her ladyship's sister asked them.Mrs.
Brent had scolded her and "poked about" her cottage, going into her tiny "wash 'us," and up into her infinitesimal bedroom under the slanting roof, to see that they were kept clean.
Miss Vanderpoel showed no disposition to "poke." She sat and listened, and made an inquiry here and there, in a nice voice and with a smile in her eyes.There was some pleasure in relating the whole history of your eighty-three years to a young lady who listened as if she wanted to hear it.So old Mrs.Welden prattled on.About her good days, when she was young, and was kitchenmaid at the parsonage in a village twenty miles away; about her marriage with a young farm labourer; about his "steady" habits, and the comfort they had together, in spite of the yearly arrival of a new baby, and the crowding of the bit of a cottage his master allowed them.Ten of 'em, and it had been "up before sunrise, and a good bit of hard work to keep them all fed and clean."But she had not minded that until Jack died quite sudden after a sunstroke.It was odd how much colour her rustic phraseology held.She made Betty see it all.The apparent natural inevitableness of their being turned out of the cottage, because another man must have it; the years during which she worked her way while the ten were growing up, having measles, and chicken pox, and scarlet fever, one dying here and there, dropping out quite in the natural order of things, and being buried by the parish in corners of the ancient church yard.Three of them "was took" by scarlet fever, then one of a "decline," then one or two by other illnesses.Only four reached man and womanhood.One had gone to Australia, but he never was one to write, and after a year or two, Betty gathered, he had seemed to melt away into the great distance.
Two girls had married, and Mrs.Welden could not say they had been "comf'able." They could barely feed themselves and their swarms of children.The other son had never been steady like his father.He had at last gone to London, and London had swallowed him up.Betty was struck by the fact that she did not seem to feel that the mother of ten might have expected some return for her labours, at eighty-three.
