“They want me to go into the 'Ouse,'” reaching the dangerous subject at last. “They say I'll be took care of an' looked after. But I don't want to do it, miss. I want to keep my bit of a 'ome if I can, an' be free to come an' go. I'm eighty-three, an' it won't be long. I 'ad a shilling a week from the parish, but they stopped it because they said I ought to go into the 'Ouse.'”
She looked at Betty with a momentarily anxious smile.
“P'raps you don't quite understand, miss,” she said. “It'll seem like nothin' to you—a place like this.”
“It doesn't,” Betty answered, smiling bravely back into the old eyes, though she felt a slight fulness of the throat. “I understand all about it.”
It is possible that old Mrs. Welden was a little taken aback by an attitude which, satisfactory to her own prejudices though it might be, was, taken in connection with fixed customs, a trifle unnatural.
“You don't mind me not wantin' to go?” she said.
“No,” was the answer, “not at all.”
Betty began to ask questions. How much tea, sugar, soap, candles, bread, butter, bacon, could Mrs. Welden use in a week? It was not very easy to find out the exact quantities, as Mrs. Welden's estimates of such things had been based, during her entire existence, upon calculation as to how little, not how much she could use.
When Betty suggested a pound of tea, a half pound—the old woman smiled at the innocent ignorance the suggestion of such reckless profusion implied.
“Oh, no! Bless you, miss, no! I couldn't never do away with it. A quarter, miss—that'd be plenty—a quarter.”