A barefooted, ruddy-cheeked little man ran out and laughed up at Nell as she bent down and stroked his head with her whip. Nell and Drake dismounted, and she led the way into the kitchen and living room of the farm.
The room was so low that Drake felt he must stoop, and Nell's tall figure looked all the taller and slimmer for its propinquity to the timbered ceiling. The woman brought a couple of glasses of milk and some saffron cakes, and Nell drank and ate with a healthy, unashamed appetite, and apparently quite forgot Drake, who, seated in the background, sipped his milk and watched and listened to her absently. She knew this woman and her husband and the children quite intimately; asked after the baby's last tooth as she bent over the sleeping mite, and was anxious to know how the eldest girl, who was in service in London, was getting on.
"Well, Emma, her says she likes it well enough," replied the woman, standing, with the instinctive delicacy of respect, with her firm hand resting on the spotlessly white table; "leastways her would if there was more air—it's the want o' air she complains of. Accordin' to she, there bean't enough for the hoosts o' people there be. Oh, yes, the family's kind enough to her—not that she has much to do wi' 'em; for she's in the nursery—she's nursemaid, you remembers, Miss Nell—and the mistress is too grand a lady to go there often. It's a great family she's in, you know, Miss Nell, a titled family, and there's grand goin's-on a'most every day; indeed, it's turnin' day into night they're at most o' the time, so says Emma. She made so bold, Emma did, to send her best respects to you in her last letter, and to say she hoped if ever you came to London she'd have the luck to see you, though it might be from a distance."
Nell nodded gratefully.
"Not that I am at all likely to go to London," she said, with a laugh. "If I did, I should be sure to go and see Emma."
Emma's mother glanced curiously at Drake; and he understood the significance of the glance, but Nell was evidently unconscious of its meaning.
"And this is the gentleman as is staying at the cottage, Miss Nell?" she said. "I hope your arm's better, sir?"
Drake made a suitable and satisfactory response, and Nell, having talked to the two little girls, who had got as near to her as their shyness would permit, rose.
"Thank you so much for the milk and cakes, Mrs. Trimble," she said. "We were quite famishing, weren't we?"
"Quite famished," assented Drake.