"Not much, only look sharp. Here is an old body just come off the tramp. Ah, there she sits. See to her while I mind the bar, for she seems a little above the common, and is quiet."
The landlord sank his voice as he made the communication, and, after a glance at the old woman, went back to his guests, while the matron addressed Mrs. Yates.
"Ye will be wanting something, no doubt. Will it be tea or a cup of ale posset?"
The old heart in that bosom stirred with a tender recollection of long ago, as this almost forgotten dish was mentioned, a dish so purely English, that she had never once heard it mentioned in her American life.
"I will thank you for a posset," she said, taking off her bonnet and smoothing her milk-white hair with both hands. "It is long since I have tasted one."
"Yes," answered the landlady, "there is more refreshment in a cup of warm posset, than in quarts of tea from China. Wait a bit and you shall have one of my own making; the maids never will learn how to curdle the milk properly, but I am a rare hand at it, as was my mother before me."
"Aye, a good housewife was your mother," said the old woman, as tender recollections stirred in her bosom, "for now I see that it is little Susan."
"Little Susan, and you know of her? That was what they used to call me when I was a lass, so high."
"But now, what is the name you go by?"
"What name should a woman go by but that of her own husband? You have just seen the master. The neighbors call him Stephen Burke."