“Aunt Katharine’s sent you a pudding,” shouted Maisie, taking it out of the basket.
“And sech a cough as I’ve had,” put in Anne, seizing the opportunity to speak, while her mother warmed the end of her trumpet at the fire; “I expect it’s a sharp touch of influenzy.”
“I seem to get weaker every day,” resumed old Sally, presenting her trumpet for Maisie’s use. “I crawled down to the gate, and couldn’t hardly get back this morning.”
“Why don’t you have the doctor?” asked Maisie.
Sally shook her head.
“I’ve never taken no doctor’s stuff in all my days,” she said. “Anne there, she’s had a deal, poor child; but ’twouldn’t do me no good.”
Dennis was beginning to make impatient signs, and Maisie knew he would not stay much longer, so in spite of Anne, who was preparing to speak, she shouted hastily down the trumpet, “Has your daughter Eliza found the kitten?”
It was answered as she expected, by solemn shakes of the head, both from Sally and Anne, in the midst of which the children took their leave.
“Please the Lord to send the rain and make the greens grow,” were old Sally’s last words. But there did not seem much chance of rain yet, for the sun was still shining splendidly, and as the children entered the shadowy barn, Tuvvy’s dark figure was lighted up by a ray which came straight through the little window. Maisie seated herself modestly in the background on a chopping-block, while Dennis asked his questions, for she was rather in awe of Tuvvy, though she liked the barn very much, and found plenty to interest her. High up among the rough rafters over her head there were so many cobwebs hanging about, that it puzzled her to think where all the spiders were who had spun them. There were no spiders now, but there were masses of cobwebs in every nook and corner, some of them waving in the dimness like flimsy grey veils, others spread about in such strange shapes that they almost seemed alive. No doubt bats lived up there, Maisie thought, and she even fancied she could see them clinging to the wall, dusky and shadowy as the cobwebs themselves. She turned her eyes with a little shudder, for she did not like bats, to the floor of the barn, and this was much more cheerful to look at, for it was covered with pretty light yellow shavings all in curls and twists. More continually floated down to join them from Tuvvy’s bench, where he was planing a piece of wood for Dennis; they were exactly like the flaxen hair of Maisie’s favourite doll. Her serious gaze wandered on to the end of the barn, which was almost filled up by a great machine something like a gigantic grasshopper. It looked terribly strong with its iron limbs, although it was at rest, and she felt half afraid of it, though she had often seen it before. What was it, and why was it there?