“Oh, he was careful to do nothing punishable,” said Mrs. Conway with a little bitter smile. “I believe the population is just as he stated, and there is certainly no other school. And there really are two acres of land, and some of the fruit-trees have no disease, so I suppose he thought he had sufficient grounds for saying ‘two acres of orchard in full bearing.’”
“The scamp,” cried the doctor again.
“Cruel, cruel,” said Mrs. Wise. She leaned back in her rocking-chair, tears suffusing her faded eyes. She was imagining herself pitted against the world, like this slight, black-clad woman, and the petty trials of her everyday life sank away into insignificance. Her glance sprang to her big, wide-backed husband striding angrily about the room. The loud tramp of his feet, the very tobacco odour that clung to him sent a sudden feeling of warmth, thankfulness, and security to her worried heart.
“Let us think what can be done, Alfred,” she said; “surely between us some plan can be arranged.”
The three little maids lunched by themselves in the cottage off bread-and-butter and apples, and [160] ]Mrs. Conway stayed shaping their lives most of the afternoon with this man and woman, who gave their help and advice as readily and thoroughly as if the stranger had been a kinswoman.
“Doing without things” Mrs. Conway agreed was to be made a fine art of. There was as much fruit as they could eat, the doctor said; they must grow vegetables (his own idle young scamps should do the digging); and fowls, it seemed, were to be got together as easily as mosquitoes.
“Fruit, eggs, vegetables—we should not starve,” said Mrs. Conway thoughtfully.
“Firewood is to be had for the gathering,” said the doctor; “good exercise for the little girls—one of them looks a bit in need of it, I notice.”
“Six guineas, and a little from the bank each quarter, would pay the rent,” continued the widow.
“But what about boots, and clothes, and bread, and groceries, and meat?” cried the doctor’s wife—these were things that made such deep holes in her own housekeeping funds.