“And please, my lady,” now said Molly, coming to the front, “if you could give me an old bit of a pelisse, or anything, to make up for my boy there. He’s getting big, you see, and he is terrible bad off for clothes. I don’t know what is to be done for the lot of ’em.”
Dora had recognised in the staring boy, who had come up close, him who had made the commotion in church; and she ventured to say, “I remember him. Don’t you think, if you or his father kept him with you in church, he would behave better there?”
“Bless you, miss, his father is a sceptic. I can’t go while I’ve got no clothes—nothing better than this, miss; and I always was used to go decent and respectable. Besides, I couldn’t nohow take he into the seat with me, as Master Pucklechurch would say I was upsetting of his missus.”
“Well, I hope to see him behave better next Sunday.”
“Do you hear, Jem? The lady is quite shocked at your rumbustiousness! But ’twas all Joe Saunders’s fault, ma’am, a terrifying the poor children. His father will give him the stick, that he will, if he hears of it again.”
Meantime Mrs Carbonel had turned to Widow Mole, who, after her first curtsey, had been weeding away diligently and coughing.
“Where do you live?” she asked. “I don’t think I have seen you before.”
“No, ma’am,” she said quietly. “I live down the Black Hollow.”
“You don’t look well. Have you been ill? You have a bad cough.”
“It ain’t nothing, ma’am, thank you. I can keep about well enough.”