“Ma’am?” asked the woman with the tub, dropping it and with arms akimbo staring amazedly at the stranger. How had such a fine madam come there? “Was you a-lookin’ for somebody, ma’am?”
Miss Laura turned her sweet old face toward the other, Meg-Laundress, and answered, “Yes, for one, Captain Simon Beck. A boy told me this tiny place was where he lives–though it doesn’t seem possible any one could really live in so small a room–and it’s empty now, anyway. Do you know where he is?”
“Off a-singin’ likely. He mostly is, this time o’ day.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I have come—” Miss Bonnicastle checked herself, unwilling to disclose to this rough stranger affairs in which she had no concern. “I was told he had a grandchild living with him. Is she anywhere about?”
“Glory? She’s off peddlin’ her goobers, I s’pose. I can give ’em any word that’s left,” said Meg, with friendly interest.
“Glory? Is her name Glory? Is it she I saw with a basket of peanuts, a yellow haired, bright-faced little girl, in a blue frock?” cried the lady, eagerly, and recalling the child’s inquiry about “Snug Harbor” felt that she should have guessed as much even then.
“Sure. The purtiest little creatur’ goin’; or, if not so purty, so good-natured an’ lovin’. Why, she’s all the sunlight we gets in the Lane, Glory is, an’, havin’ her, some on us don’t ’pear to need no more. Makes all on us do her say-so but always fer our own betterment. In an’ out, up an’ down, lendin’ a hand or settin’ a stitch or tendin’ a baby, all in the day’s work, an’ queenin’ it over the hull lot, that’s our ‘Goober Glory,’ bless her! And evil to anybody would harm the child, say I! Though who’d do ill to her? Is’t a bit of word you’d be after leavin’, ma’am?” said Meg, with both kindness and curiosity.
“Thank you. If you see either of them, will you say that Miss Bonnicastle, Colonel Bonnicastle’s sister, will be here again in the morning, unless it storms, upon important business? Ask them to wait here for me, please. I should not like to make a second useless trip. Good-afternoon.”
As the gentlewoman turned and made her way back along the alley toward her distant carriage, which could come no nearer to her because the Lane was so narrow, Meg watched and admired her, reflecting with some pride:
“She’s the real stuff, that old lady is. Treated me polite ’s if I was the same sort she is. I wonder what’s doin’ ’twixt her an’ the Becks? Well, I’ll find out afore I sleep, or my name ain’t Meg-Laundress, an’ I say it. Guess Jane’ll open her eyes when I up an’ tells her how one them grand folks she sees crossin’ the bridge so constant has got astray in the Lane an’ come a visitin’, actilly a visitin’, one our own folks. But then, I always knowed, we Elbowers was a touch above some, an’ now she’ll know it, too.