“Peggy!” I said.
“I tuk it—I tuk it!” wailed the old woman. “I tuk it fro’ the wall when I come up wi’ the blarnkets and nubbody were there to see!”
“Why did you take it and why have you riddled it with holes like this?”
She slipped down on her trembling knees.
“Don’tee be hard on me, Renalt—don’tee! I swear, I were frighted myself at what I done. I didn’t hardly guess it would act so. Don’tee have me burnt or drownded, Renalt. It were a wicked thing to a body old enough to be your grandam, and I’ve but a little glint o’ time left.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Peggy. You’d no business to take the picture, of course, and still less to treat it like this. But your nature’s a thieving one, and I suppose you can’t help it. Get off your knees. It’s done, and there’s an end of it.”
She stopped her driveling moan and looked up at me queerly, I thought.
“Ay, I’d no call to do it, of course,” she said. “Just a body’s absence o’ mind, Renalt, ye see—same as pricking pastry in time to a toone like. I thought maybe if ye saw it ye’d want to tell the old man upstairs, and he’s got the strong arm yet, for all the worm in his brain.”
“I sha’n’t tell him this time, but don’t let me catch you handling any of our property again”; and I left the room.
A little flustered by my late tussle and hardly yet in a mood for the interview I clearly foresaw would be no amicable one, I wandered out, turning my footsteps, not at present in the direction of the doctor’s house, but toward that part of the river called the “weirs,” which ran straight away from the mill front. This was a pleasant, picturesque stretch down which the water, shaded by many stooping trees and bushes, washed and gurgled brightly. A railed pathway ran by it and, to the same side, cottages at intervals and little plats of flowering parterres.