“Well; that is true: and she does look so poorly.... Ah! now, there’s master John coming out with a speech about my fresh colour again.”
John was not thinking about anybody’s colour. He wanted to know whether it was not true that he had had eleven-pence change from her the night before.
“To be sure you had, after taking a penny roll.”
John called his mother to witness, that she might tell his father, that he was in possession of a shilling before the troubles began at Kirkland’s; to say nothing of those farther on. His father had doubted his getting that shilling honestly, and had desired his mother to take possession of the eleven pence till the whole was unquestionably accounted for; and now John wanted his money back again. Mrs. Kay did not, however, heed his request; and the matter ended in Mary’s persuading the boy that if he had the money by the time he was at liberty to go out, it would do very well, instead of pressing for it now that his mother was busy thinking of something else.
“Why, take care, Mrs. Kay!” cried her neighbour. “Your hand shakes so, you will certainly let the dish down, and that will cost you more than a meal of my best bread would have done. Well! that is a beautiful potato to have left among the peelings. And here’s another! I wonder you let the children scatter their food about in that manner.”
“’Tis not the children,” observed Mary. “They have not more than they are very willing to eat, poor things! Their mother has but little appetite, and she is apt to slip her food back into the dish, that it may not make her husband uneasy.—I want your help more than she does,” she continued, seeing that Mrs. Skipper’s officious assistance was obstinately refused by the poor woman. “Will you step behind, and help me to beat and winnow my corn, if you have a minute to spare?”
With all her heart, Mrs. Skipper said; but she had an errand, though it was not to bring cider or hot bread. She had learned the secret of making potato-bread: not the doughy, distasteful stuff that many people were eating, but light, digestible, palatable bread. She would not tell the secret to everybody,—giving away her own trade; but when she saw a family of old friends eating potatoes, morning, noon, and night, she could not help telling them how they might get something better.
Mary thanked her, and observed that she did not know how she could put her gleaned corn to a better use than in making the experiment of a batch of mixed flour and potato-bread.
“Ah! do; and I will treat you to the baking, and look well to it myself. For my credit’s sake, you know; having set you to try. Come, let us have the corn beat out.”
They went to the back of the house to thresh and winnow, and then the widow’s first exclamation was about how sadly out of sorts Mrs. Kay seemed to be.