“Yes,” Betsey replied to the other’s evident relief, “the toy-cupboard is safe at the cottage.”
“I have always been waiting to hear that they were going to rebuild the house,” the woman went on, “but year after year goes by and they keep on living in the little cottage. Miss Miranda loved her home so, I know she is sick at heart to go back to it. I don’t understand it.”
“Nor do I,” observed Betsey with a sigh.
“It may be because of that work her father is doing,” suggested the other shrewdly. “Such things do take a power of money and I am certain Miss Miranda would do without anything rather than have him give it up. She would think that was her share of the success that she has always felt certain was coming. He has worked at the thing ten years now, he should be finishing it one of these days.” She dropped her voice to question Betsey with the earnestness of real friendship and devotion. “I don’t see her very often now, but I think of her all the time. Do you—do you think she is happy?”
Betsey shook her head slowly.
“I am afraid not,” she replied.
“Her father was always so anxious that she should be, he was absorbed in his work but he never would forget about that. He depended on her and consulted with her even when she was not a great deal bigger than you, yet was running the whole place and keeping the two boys in order. Mr. Ted adored her and she him, he was a fine fellow. But that Cousin Donald, we in the kitchen could never abide him with his sharp selfish face and his overbearing ways. She could face him down, but at heart she was afraid of him, I used to think. He could say such cruel, cutting things to hurt her, although she would never show it. I have known Mr. Ted to black his eye for him, for all he was so much younger, when he thought his sister had been made unhappy. Proud they are, and sensitive to the quick, father and daughter and son. That Donald Reynolds was an alien amongst them.”
Her flood of recollection went on, but began to wander to such details as Joe’s courting and how they were married, in which Betsey did not feel quite so great an interest, so that at last she took advantage of a slight pause in the talk to say that she must go. There was one more question she wished to ask.
“That cousin, what did he look like?”
“Oh, insignificant like,” was the somewhat vague answer. “He had black hair and eyes that were greenish, a little, they always put me in mind of boiled gooseberries. He was the sort of person bound to prosper, and after Miss Miranda helped to bring him up I wonder how he can see her want for anything. There now, if you must go I have a setting of eggs I’ve wanted to send over to her for her poultry yard, they’re the best in the state.”