"There is Mrs. Talcott," said Karen, quickening her pace. Evidently she considered Mrs. Talcott, in her relation to Tante, as an important feature of Les Solitudes.
It was her relation to Karen that caused Gregory to look with interest at the stout old lady, dressed in black alpaca, who was stooping over a flower-border at a little distance from them. He had often wondered what this sole companion of Karen's cloistered life was like. Mrs. Talcott's skirts were short; her shoes thick-soled and square-toed, fastening with a strap and button over white stockings at the ankle. She wore a round straw hat, like a child's, and had a basket of gardening implements beside her.
"Mrs. Talcott, here is Mr. Jardine," Karen announced, as they approached her.
Mrs. Talcott raised herself slowly and turned to them, drawing off her gardening gloves. She was a funny looking old woman, funnier than Karen had prepared him for finding her, and uglier. Her large face, wallet-shaped and sallow, was scattered over with white moles, or rather, warts, one of which, on her eyelid, caused it to droop over her eye and to blink sometimes, suddenly. She had a short, indefinite nose and long, large lips firmly folded. With its updrawn hair and impassivity her face recalled that of a Chinese image; but more than of anything else she gave Gregory the impression, vaguely and incongruously tragic, of an old shipwrecked piece of oaken timber, washed up, finally, out of reach of the waves, on some high, lonely beach; battered, though still so solid; salted through and through; crusted with brine, and with odd, bleached excrescences, like barnacles, adhering to it. Her look of almost inhuman cleanliness added force to the simile.
"Mr. Jardine heard Tante last winter, you know," said Karen, "and met her at Mrs. Forrester's."
"I'm very happy to make your acquaintance, Sir," said Mrs. Talcott, giving Gregory her hand.
"Mrs. Talcott is a great gardener," Karen went on. "Tante has the ideas and Mrs. Talcott carries them out. And sometimes they aren't easy to carry out, are they, Mrs. Talcott!"
Mrs. Talcott, her hands folded at her waist, contemplated her work.
"Mitchell made a mistake about the campanulas, Karen," she remarked. "He's put the clump of blue over yonder, instead of the white."
"Oh, Mrs. Talcott!" Karen turned to look. "And Tante specially wanted the white there so that they should be against the sea. How very stupid of Mitchell."