"From Tom? O' course 'tis from Tom! Get along with 'ee do! What other man would be writing to me at my time o' life?"
The postman walked on, laughing. Mrs. Trevarthen stood for some while irresolute, holding the envelope between finger and thumb, and glancing from it to a closed door at the back of the gallery. A slant low sun-ray almost reached to the threshold, and was cut short there by the shadow of the gallery eaves.
"Best not disturb her, I s'pose," said the old woman, with a sigh. She laid the letter down, but very reluctantly, beside the wash-tub, and plunged both hands among the suds again. "Quebec!" The word recalled a silly old song of the sailors; she had heard her boy hum it again and again—
"Was you ever to Quebec,
Bonnie lassie, bonnie lassie?
Was you ever to Quebec,
Rousing timber over the deck."—
"Was you ever to Quebec,
Bonnie lassie, bonnie lassie?
Was you ever to Quebec,
Rousing timber over the deck."—
A door opened at the end of the gallery, and Hester came through.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Trevarthen!"
"'Mornin', my dear."
These two were friends now on the common ground of nursing Aunt Butson, who had been bedridden almost from the day of her admission to the almshouse, her gaunt frame twisted with dire rheumatics.
Hester, arriving to take up her duties and finding Mrs. Trevarthen outworn with nursing, had packed her off to rest and taken her place by the invalid's bedside. In this service she had been faithful ever since; and it was no light one, for affliction did not chasten Mrs. Butson's caustic tongue.