“I remembered seeing you carry off the rain in the same way last week,” Betsey answered, “so I thought I’d try it myself. But I didn’t know that you were anywhere near.”
“That was but an April shower,” he rejoined, “such as a stiff old man could get the better of, but I’ve known this long time that I wasn’t able any more to fight one of these unseasonable thunderstorms. The ground here lies well for the sun but ill for the rain, as I’m always telling Miss Miranda. She’ll be glad and thankful that you have saved her crop! And how it did rain, as though it were Saint Swithin’s Day itself!”
“And how long have you been sitting there?” demanded Betsey. “You might at least have told me what to do.”
“I came out thinking to try what I could myself, but when I saw you at the work, I could tell that you knew what you were about, so where was the use of wasting any words. I just waited in case you needed any help, but you managed better alone than with an old man to hinder. I’ve no doubt that your hands are blistered and that you’ll find your back aching to-morrow, but you have saved the garden. It will be something Miss Reynolds will be glad to hear when she comes home.”
“Is she coming soon? Where did she go?” Elizabeth inquired eagerly.
“Now that I don’t know,” Michael answered with a sigh. “She decided within an hour and off she went. It might have been to consult her cousin that looks after her business affairs and that used to live here when he was a boy.”
“What was her cousin’s name?”
The rain had almost ceased, so Elizabeth laid aside her hoe, stretched her cramped fingers and went to stand in front of Michael and ply him with questions. Such a talkative mood was so rare in him that she feared, any second, it might pass away, and, since here at last was some one who could and would tell her more of Miss Miranda, she trembled lest silence should come suddenly upon him before she had heard what she wished to know. The rain was pattering from her skirts, her feet sank every moment deeper into the mud, but she feared to move or turn away lest the spell should break. Good fortune seemed to be with her, however, for Michael talked on and on, relighting his pipe as often as the water quenched it, and answering her queries to the best of his ability.
“His name was Don, Mr. Donald Reynolds he is now, and I find it hard to remember when I see him, that they were ever little things here together and he was her Cousin Don. I never liked the lad, and began to mistrust him from the first I knew of him, when his face was just beginning to look keen and sharp and he was learning to think it was a great joke that he could so easily get the better of the other two, Miss Miranda and Mr. Ted, and shape things to go all his way. Now he is rich and prosperous and beginning to grow fat, but still he has that sharp, selfish face. He has forgotten how to be kind to Miss Miranda, he has forgotten how good she was to him when he was a snub-nosed boy with long legs and skinned knees and the both of them with no mother. Yes, he has forgotten all that, has Mr. Donald Reynolds.”
“And you think she has gone somewhere to consult him?” Elizabeth asked.