“Oh, dear!”—Loki’s Mother is duly impressed, but anxious to distract Mrs. Mutton’s mind—“That is very sad. I hope you’re feeling pretty well to-day, Mrs. Mutton?”
“No, Miss, I’m very poorly these days. Mrs. Tosher here says she’s never seen any one like me. ‘What can it be,’ she says, ‘that makes you like this?’ Don’t you, Mrs. Tosher?”
“Yes, my dear.”
“I fell agin the water-butt this morning,” goes on Mrs. Mutton, in the melancholy drone that is habitual to her. “A kind of weakness it was come over me. I hit my eye—something awful, Miss, as you can see!”
The signorina had been tactfully averting her gaze from that black orb; she now blesses the superior tact which enables her to contemplate it calmly.
Mrs. Tosher—a large, jovial, untidy female with a shrunken “blue cotton” inadequately fastened by two safety pins across her capacious bosom—gives a heavy but non-committal groan. Mr. Mutton’s name is not mentioned. The water-butt explanation is accepted without demur.
“Of course, she’s ’ad a shock to-day, Miss, you see,” says the village matron, and brings the conversation back to the original topic, which is one of great attraction.
“Yes, Miss, it ’aving been just as it might be me, Miss.” Mrs. Mutton sighs, and looks in a detached, if one-sided manner, out of the grimy window. The visitor perceives there is nothing for it: she must hear the details. Wisely she resigns herself.
“What happened?”
“Well, it was all along of two suet dumplings and some chops, Miss, which wasn’t as they ought to have been, having been kept in the ’ouse too long, you see. Wasn’t that it, Mrs. Tosher, my dear?”