“Please, we’ve come from Thorpe.”
“You’ve come from Thorpe! you poor little bits of things! All that way!” cried Mrs Wade, whose heart was as large as her tongue was ready. “Why, I do believe you’re Cicely Johnson. You are so grown I didn’t know you at first—and yet you’re no bigger than a mouse, as I told you. Have you had any supper?”
“No, Mistress. Please, we don’t have supper, only now and then. We shall do very well, indeed, if we may stay for the preaching.”
“You’ll sit down there, and eat some bread and milk, before you’re an hour older. Poor little white-faced mortals as ever I did see! But you’ve never carried that child all the way from Thorpe?—Doll didst ever see such children?”
“They’re proper peaked, Mistress,” said Dorothy. (See note 1.)
“Oh no!” answered the truth-loving Cissy. “I only carried her from the Gate. Neighbour Ursula, she bare her all the way.”
“Thou’rt an honest lass,” said Mrs Wade, patting Cissy on the head. “There, eat that.”
And she put a large slice of bread into the hand of both Will and Cissy, setting a goodly bowl of milk on the table between them.
“That’s good!” commented Will, attacking the milk-bowl immediately.
Cissy held him back, and looked up into Mrs Wade’s kindly and capacious face.