The remark should have seemed innocent enough, and what most mothers would have flushed with pride to hear, but Mrs. Cave was clever, and knew her prey.
The widow glanced at her sharply, uneasily, and laid her money down on the counter.
“Look alive, Mr. Barfield, please,” said she, “I’m late to-night.”
The slight was too great to be borne. Mrs. Cave moved to the doorway.
“Oh, you don’t need to ’urry,” said she, tartly. “’E be only just gone round the corner to the Parsonage with your basket o’ linen. ’E won’t be back just yet.”
A faint tremor ran through Mrs. Collins’ body even to the hand that she stretched out to take her parcel, but she said nothing, and to any observer less keen than the rival laundress, the tremor was but a shiver that was easily accounted for by the sea-fog that was slowly sweeping up across the marsh below.
“Well, I wish you joy o’ getting him back so well set up,” said Mr. Barfield, good-naturedly, as he tied the knot in the string. “It must do your ’eart good, I’m sure, to have him by to give you a ’and again when you ’ave to work for yourself all the year round.”
The widow looked at him, and in her eyes was a hardness that might well have chilled a braver man.
“Thank you,” she said coldly, “I don’t know as one day makes much odds.”
Mr. Barfield was silent, and so indeed was Mrs. Cave, but the plumber’s wife, blundering on, said patronizingly: