“She’s so fast, it’s a sin to take her up, ma’am,” she murmured, “but I would like you to see her.”
Mrs Leigh had now recovered her power of speech. “Don’t disturb her for the world,” she said, “I’m not going away yet. I shall be glad to rest a little. She’ll wake presently, I dare say. What is it,” she continued, looking round the room, “that smells so delicious? Oh, what lovely lilac!” as her eye rested on the flowers in the window.
Mrs White had taken up her sewing again.
“I always liked the laylocks myself, ma’am,” she said, “partic’ler the white ones. It were a common bush in the part I lived as a gal, but there’s not much hereabouts.”
“Where did you get it?” asked Mrs Leigh, leaning forward to smell the pure-white blossoms; “I thought there was only the blue in the village.”
“Why, no more there is,” said Mrs White with a half-ashamed smile; “but Jem, he knows I’m a bit silly over them, and he got ’em at Cuddingham t’other day. You see, the day I said I’d marry him he gave me a bunch of white laylocks—and that’s ten years ago. Sitting still so much more than I’m used lately, with the baby, puts all sorts of foolishness into my head, and when you knocked just now it gave me quite a start, for the smell of the laylocks took me right back to the days when we were sweetheartin’.”
“How is Jem?” asked Mrs Leigh, glancing at a gun which stood in the chimney corner.
“He’s well, ma’am, thank you, but out early and home late. There’s bin poaching in the woods lately, and the keepers have a lot of trouble with ’em.”
“None of our people, I hope?” said the rector’s wife anxiously.
“Oh dear, no, ma’am! A gipsy lot—a cruel wild set, to be sure, from what Jem says, and fight desperate.”