"And how are you yourself, Mrs. Chute?" inquired Dido sympathetically.
"Oh, I got a very heavy turn that last time, me lady; but that stuff you sent me and the jam did me a power of good. I'm finely now."
"Well, I'm very glad to hear it. Tell Darby I want to see him this evening, please—it's about the pigs; you won't forget?" said Dido, turning her face homewards as she spoke.
"Isn't it a funny thing, that of all the years we have been here we have never been inside Chute's house!" exclaimed Katie. "Mrs. Chute comes and stands at the door, but she never asks us further. This in Ireland, where the first word is, 'Won't you walk in and take a sate?' is odd."
"Is that his wife?" inquired Helen.
"Oh, no; his mother. He was nearly being married once to the daughter of a well-to-do farmer, but they fell out about her dowry. They 'split,' as they call it, over a chest of drawers. I don't think he will ever marry now. Somehow the neighbours don't like him; they say he is very distant and dark in himself."
"I heard you were wanting me, Miss Dido," said a squeaky voice, which made them all turn round with quite a guilty start.
Standing on the grass behind them (why could he not walk on the road?) Helen beheld a tall, elderly man, with sharp features and a pair of keen, grey eyes, set close together in his head. He had a coat over his shoulder, a stick in his hand, and a most deceitful-looking lurcher at his heels.
"Yes, Darby, I left a message," replied Dido, quickly recovering herself. "It's only to ask you about selling the store pigs."
"Av they are fit,—and with all the feeding they are getting they bid to be as fat as snails—ye might sell them on the fifteenth; but mind you," shaking his head solemnly, "pigs is down—terribly down! And so this is your cousin, Miss Denis?" putting his finger to his hat.