Had I been favored with any other companion than himself, I should have been glad of this opportunity. As it was, I found myself ignoring any possible danger I might be running, in my interest in the remarkable interior to which I was thus introduced.
Having been told that Mother Jane was poor, I had expected to confront squalor and possibly filth, but I never have entered a cleaner place or one in which order made the poorest belongings look more decent. The four walls were unfinished, and so were the rafters which formed the ceiling, but the floor, neatly laid in brick, was spotless, and the fireplace, also of brick, was as deftly swept as one could expect from the little scrub I saw hanging by its side. Crouched within this fireplace sat the old woman we had come to interview. Her back was to us, and she looked helplessly and hopelessly deaf.
"Ask her," said William, pointing towards her with a rude gesture, "if she will come to the house at sunset. My sisters have some work for her to do. They will pay her well."
Advancing at his bidding, I passed a rocking-chair, in the cushion of which a dozen patches met my eye. This drew my eyes toward a bed, over which a counterpane was drawn, made up of a thousand or more pieces of colored calico, and noticing their varied shapes and the intricacy with which they were put together, I wondered whether she ever counted them. The next moment I was at her back.
"Seventy," burst from her lips as I leaned over her shoulder and showed her the coin which I had taken pains to have in my hand.
"Yours," I announced, pointing in the direction of the house, "if you will do some work for Miss Knollys to-night."
Slowly she shook her head before burying it deeper in the shawl she wore wrapped about her shoulders. Listening a minute, I thought I heard her mutter: "Twenty-eight, ten, but no more. I can count no more. Go away!"
But I'm nothing if not persistent. Feeling for her hands, which were hidden away somewhere under her shawl, I touched them with the coin and cried again:
"This and more for a small piece of work to-night. Come, you are strong; earn it."
"What kind of work is it?" I asked innocently, or it must have appeared innocently, of Mr. Knollys, who was standing at my back.