"And tell 'em all that you sees goin' on here!"
"But what is there to tell?" said the widow, with widely-opened eyes. "You are all steady, hardworking people; and if you do gossip and quarrel, sometimes, that is nothing to anyone but yourselves."
"And you want to go and tell old madam that we gossip and quarrel, and so get our Christmas coals stopped! No! No! Betsy Gunn ain't goin' to help no such doings as that."
Mrs. Winn wondered for a minute whether the woman had lost her wits, but she saw plainly enough that she spoke in all earnestness. And she wondered what she had better do to disarm the suspicion that seemed to her so senseless, but was to these poor people real enough.
At last she decided that there was nothing like telling the truth, painful as it was, to make her affairs known to all the village. So she beckoned Betsy into the parlour, that she and Elsie had taken such pains to make neat and nice.
"Sit down a minute," she said, "and I will tell you why I have come here, and what I want to do. I am a widow, and my husband could leave me very little money when he died; so I am obliged to work for my children, or they would starve, and it is to get work I have come here."
"What work?" demanded Betsy.
"Dressmaking," said Mrs. Winn.
The woman's hard face relaxed a little. "Us don't do that,—the gentry and their fine servants send that to London."
"That is just what I was told," said the widow, "but now I am going to ask some of these ladies to send it to me, instead of sending it to London; and I want you to tell me the best way to go to Madam Kennaway lives there the Manor House. I understand, and if I can only see her, I may be able to get some work."