The Lloyds rose, Mrs Lloyd looking like ashes as she clung to her husband’s arm; while Pratt left his place, and stood behind the chair of his friend.
“I’d forgotten all about it, look you,” said the old lady, prattling away, “till Polly wrote to me from her school; and then it all came back about Chane Lloyd and her paby, and her having the fever when her mistress died. Why, look you, tidn’t I go up to the nursery after peing town to see the funeral, and find Chane Lloyd hat peen up there, and put her paby in the young master’s cratle? and, look you, titn’t I go town to chite her, and find her all off her heat, and she was ill for weeks? I thought she’d tone it without knowing, or, peing wild-like, had liked to see her little one in the young master’s clothes. I put that all right again, and nursed poth pabies till she cot well. Lloyd—Trevor—tidn’t I see them poth as soon as they came into the worlt, and to you think I ton’t know them? Why, look at them!”
She turned to Pratt, who was nearest to her; but she cried out in alarm, for the little fellow had caught her in his arms and kissed her on both cheeks, as he cried—
“It isn’t Mother Hubbard, Dick, but the good fairy out of the story-book. God bless you! old lady, for this. Here, Humphrey, see to your mother.”
But Humphrey was pumping away at both Richard Trevor’s arms, as he cried, excitedly—
“Hooray! Master Dick. I never felt so happy in my life. Polly, lass, we shall get the cottage after all.”
He saw the next moment, though, that Mrs Lloyd had fainted dead away; and his were the arms that carried her to her bedroom, while Polly crept to the old Welshwoman’s side.
“I came, look you, Master Richard, to put all this right,” said the old lady. “Putt it was all nonsense, I teclare to cootness. Anypody might have seen.”
“I—I thank you—I’m contused—dazed, rather,” said Trevor, looking from one to the other. “Polly, my poor girl, I’ll try to make up to you for this disappointment.”
“I’m not disappointed, please, Mr Richard, sir,” said Mrs Humphrey, bobbing a curtsey, and then trying a boarding-school salute and failing, and blushing terribly.