“She bided silent a moment. Then she said, ‘Honor reckons her goose is a swan, an’ thinks that her ugly, li’l fat boy is a cherub.’ I stared at her till my eyes bulged out; I couldn’t believe my own ears. She meant it, of course; but no call for you to grow so red, my dear, she didn’t mean it a bit unkindly. ’Twas just her honest opinion that your little angel be too fat an’ too ugly for anything. ‘If you think that,’ I answered her, ‘you’d better not mention it.’”
“She said my li’l boy was ugly?”
“She thinks so. She’s positive of it. She’s a very honest woman, mind you. With all her many faults, she’s honest. She wouldn’t have said it if she hadn’t really believed it. She’m dead certain of it.”
“My Billy ugly! Did ’e ever set eyes on a finer babby, tell me that?”
“Me? I never seed such a purty child in all my life. He’m a like a li’l blue-eyed Love off a valentine. But she—”
“A woman who could say my child was ugly could only say it for malice,” declared the red-haired mother, with a rising breast.
“Don’t think that. Her own maidens be very homely, you see. ’Tis a little natural jealousy, be-like.”
“’Tis a lie, Jane Bloom, an’ I’ll never believe she said it—never.”
“You’ll be sorry for that word, Honor Haycraft. Ax her, then. Ax her if her didn’t tell me your little boy was fat an’ ugly. She’s never been catched out in a lie yet, ’tis said. See what she’ll answer you. An’ when you’ve heard her speak, I shall expect you to say you’m sorry to me. I never yet willingly uttered an unkind word against any living soul, an’ never will. If you want to live in a fool’s paradise, that’s your lookout. But it shall never be said I didn’t do my duty to my neighbour according to the Prayer Book ordinance.”
With this vague but masterly speech Mrs. Bloom rose from her tea and held the cottage door open. Her guest took the hint, and in ten minutes was at home again.