‘Here,’ she said in a hurry, ‘you go round to the other side of the cottage, and there’s a hornbeam arbour and a bench and table, and you’re very welcome to sit there. I’ll tell you all about it afterwards,’ she added, whispering. ‘Only do take it and go.’
‘But what is it?’ Rupert asked.
‘She’s crying dreadfully. I don’t know what it is yet. Oh, do go.’
And she thrust the tray on him and went back through the door with an air of importance which even the others found just a little trying. However, they were thirsty and loyal, so they did as they were asked to do; found the hornbeam arbour, and settled down on the blue-painted benches to drink their lemonade and tell each other how thirsty they had been, drawing deep breaths between the draughts to say so with.
Caroline, in the meantime, was in the back kitchen of the strange cottage gently patting the shoulder of a perfect stranger, who sat with her elbows on the mangle and her head in her hands crying, crying, crying.
‘Don’t! oh, please don’t!’ said Caroline, again and again; and again and again the woman who was crying said, ‘Go away. I can’t attend to you. Go away!’
She was a middle-aged woman, and her dark hair, streaked with grey, was screwed up behind in a tight knob. Her sleeves were tucked up, and all round her were piles of those square boxes with wooden divisions in which lemonade and ginger-beer travel about. The boxes were dotted with greeny bottles, some full, some empty, and the boxes were everywhere—on the sink, under the sink, on the copper, on the bricks, and outside the open back door.
‘Don’t cry,’ said Caroline in a voice that would have soothed an angry bear. ‘Do tell me what’s the matter. I might be able to help you.’
‘Oh, go along, do!’ said the woman, trying to dry her eyes with a corner of a blue-checked apron. ‘You seem a kind little gell, but it ain’t no good. Run along, dearie.’
‘But,’ said Caroline, ‘if you don’t stop crying, how am I going to pay you for the lemonade I took when you said I might? Three bottles it was.’