“Come right in, children. Why! Is it these two nice little girls who would steal from a lame old woman’s garden when that is all she has to live on?”
We began to cry, both of us.
“No, no! Don’t cry. It’s nothing to cry about. Come and sit here.”
“Uh-hu-hu!” sobbed Mina. “Have you nothing to live on but currants and parsley, Madam Igland?”
“Oh, I live on the money I get for them, you know.”
“We’ll never, never do it again, Madam Igland,” I promised.
“No, no. You surely will not. But sit here now and talk a little with me.”
So there we sat, each on her chair and Madam Igland in her immense wheel-chair by the window where the “spy-mirror” was. In her lap she had a black cat and on the window-sill sat another, blinking its green eyes.
“Isn’t it awfully tedious to sit here all day long and only look out of the window?” I asked when we had composed ourselves a little.
“Oh, no! One gets used to anything. It will soon be fifteen years since the Lord took the use of my legs from me. First, I sat in the corner by the bed for twelve years, but I got very tired of that. I knew every nail-head in the floor and every dot in the wall-paper. So I moved over to the window and have sat here for three years; and it is much better.”