Cottage visiting turned out to be a much chequered affair. One of the first places to which the sisters made their way was the Widow Mole’s. They found it, rather beyond the church, down a lane, where it was hidden behind an overgrown thorn hedge, and they would scarcely have found it at all, if a three-year-old child had not been clattering an old bit of metal against the bar put across to prevent his exit. He was curly and clean, except with the day’s surface dirt, but he only stared stolidly at the question whether Mrs Mole lived there. A ten-year-old girl came out, and answered the question.
“Yes, mother do live here, but her be out at work.”
“Is that your grandfather?” as they caught sight of a very old man on a chair by the door, in the sun.
“Yes, ma’am. Will you come in and see him?”
He was a very old man, with scanty white hair, but he was very clean, and neatly dressed in a white smock, mended all over, but beautifully worked over the breast and cuffs, and long leather buskins. He was very civil, too. He took off his old straw hat, and rose slowly by the help of his stout stick, though the first impulse of the visitors was to beg him not to move. He did not hear them, but answered their gesture.
“I be so crippled up with the rheumatics, you see, ma’am,” and he put his knotted and contracted hand up to his ear.
Mrs Carbonel shouted into his ear that she was sorry for him. She supposed his daughter was out at work.
“Yes, ma’am, with Farmer Goodenough—a charing to-day it is.”
“Washing,” screamed the little girl.
“She was off at five o’clock this morning,” he went on. “She do work hard, my daughter Bess, and she’s a good one to me, and so is little Liz here. Thank the Lord for them.”