Sarah was a lone creature up fifty year old, and she come along to Mrs. Badge one fine day with a proper peck of troubles. She crept down the path to Walna from Merripit Hill, like a snail with a backache, and weren't in no case at all for merriment; yet the first thing she heard as she come in was laughter; and the first thing she seed was pretty Mary Tuckett sitting on Mrs. Badge's kitchen table, swinging her legs, and eating bits of raw rhubarb out of a pie as my mistress was trying to make.
Mary was a beauty, and a bit too fond of No. 1, like most of that sort.
"'Tis too bad," she said to the new-comer, "ban't it too bad, Mrs. White? Here's Charity, well known for the cleverest woman 'pon Dartymoor, won't tell me my fortune or look in her crystal for me, though I be offering her a two-shilling piece to do so."
"You go along," said Charity. "Don't you waste no more of my time, and let your fortune take care of itself. It don't want a wise woman to tell the fortune of such a lazy, good-for-nought as you."
Then Mary went off laughing, and poor Mrs. White began her woes.
"I could have told that woman something as would have changed her laughter to tears," she began. "But time enough for that. Can you list to me for an hour, Charity? I'm in cruel trouble, look where I will, and if there's any way out, I'll be very glad to pay good money to know it."
"Let me put the paste 'pon this here pie, then I'll hear what you've got to grumble at," answers the wise woman; and five minutes later she sat down and folded her hands and shut her eyes and heard what Sarah had got to tell.
"When my husband was alive, he worked for Peter Hacker's father at Bellaford, and lived in a little cottage on a newtake field a mile from Bellaford Farm. Old Hacker often said to my husband that when he'd paid rent for fifty year for the cottage, he'd let him have it for his own. 'Twas common knowledge that he intended to do it. But now, with my husband dead in his grave—and he died just six months after he'd paid his fiftieth year of rent, poor soul!—Peter Hacker have told me that the cottage ban't to be mine at all, and that 'tis all rubbish, and not a contract. I tell him that the ghost of my poor Thomas will turn his hair grey for such wickedness; but you know Peter Hacker. Hard as the nether millstone, and cruel as winter—with women. Very different, though, if a brave man beards him. Now he's dunning me for two years' rent, and even when I told him all that hangs on my keeping the cottage, he won't change or hold to the solemn promise his father made my husband. In fact, he'll turn me out at midsummer."
"And what do hang on your keeping the house?" asked Charity.
Mrs. White sniffed and cooled her tearful eyes with her handkercher.