“I believe ye would, myself,” said Granny Joslin simply. “Ye’ll be welcome here, so fer as what we got to give ye. We’re all alike.”
Polly Pendleton was pausing for a moment’s thought. “We hadn’t the slightest idea in the world, of course, or we’d never have come here. We—I don’t think we want to bother Mrs. Haddon, you know. She’d rather be alone, I’m sure.” She held back, hesitating.
“She’s a fine womern, Ma’am, accordin’ to Davy,” rejoined the old woman. “He says she’s the finest he ever seed, and he’s been Outside and seed a power of things in his time, Davy has.”
“Well,” broke in Polly Pendleton, now with a certain asperity, “one thing, she can’t be any hungrier than I am right now.”
“So long as ye kin eat ye’re a-goin’ to survive your sorrer, Ma’am, I always heerd,” rejoined Granny Joslin grimly. “Well, come along. We all got to die some time, come to that.”
She placed her pipe in her pocket now, after knocking out the ashes, and started out forthwith in the lead, her bent and bony body, shrunken and battered under the weight of years and infirmity, scarce as tall as Polly Pendleton by half a head. Her course was across the street along which, further down, lay the house of Granny Williams.
“Well, Nina, old dear,” commented Polly, sotto voce, as they followed, “things couldn’t be much worse, could they? Poor chap—isn’t it a horrible thing? And we never knew a word!”
Her uncommunicative comrade only nodded, her face drawn into lines none too happy now, for she it was, of the firm of Pendleton and Stanton, who usually was the more concerned with the business affairs.
“And here’s his wife in here, too—that makes it a lot harder,” she said at length. “I’ve a picture of how much she loves you, Polly! There’s plenty of places I’d rather be in than right here now, my dear!”