She clutched her stick tightly and prepared to pick up her bundle; but Amethyst stooped for her and gave it to her with a smile.
"Thank you, my pretty dear. God bless you both for helpin' me. And now I'll get on a bit, if that there beast 'll let me." But even as she spoke, she tottered and would have fallen, but for a helping-hand from Elsa.
"'Tis the rheumatizzy, missy; it ketches me all of a heap like, nows and thens."
"Let us go a little way with her, Thistle," suggested Elsa, and Amethyst agreed readily, although their companions tried to persuade them not to go.
"Whereabouts are you going?" asked Elsa.
"To my darter's, missy; Joe Hodges' wife she be as lives over agin Disbrowe House."
"Oh! I know Mrs. Hodges, Elsa," cried Amethyst; "she comes to the mothers' meeting. Her husband works for Sir Tudor Disbrowe."
"So he do, missy, and they has a cottage on the estate, so they've a-told me. But I be a stranger to these parts, and I must have mistook my way a-crossin' the copse. I tried to foller the 'rections they gave me at the station, but I made sure I'd took a wrong turn just as that there animal a-bounced at me."
"It's more than a mile from here to Mrs. Hodges' cottage," said Amethyst, somewhat dubiously. She was not quite sure that her good nature was equal to traversing all that distance with the comical old woman.
"Can you walk so far as that, if we help you, do you think?" asked Elsa.