Yet neither the glory of being once more within the four walls of a house, nor the refreshment of the milk which she drank readily enough, seemed appreciably to rouse Mrs Gosling’s spirits.
The woman of the farm, a kindly enough creature, plied the old lady with questions, but received few and confused answers in reply. Mrs Gosling seemed dazed and stupid. “A touch of the sun,” the farmer’s widow thought.
“The sun’s been cruel strong the past week,” she said, “but she’ll be all right in a day or two, get her to shelter.”
“Ah! that’s the trouble,” said Blanche.
That night the farmer’s widow said no more on that subject. She allowed the three Goslings to sleep in an upstair room, in which there was one small bed for the mother, and the two girls slept on the floor. Exchanging confidence for confidence, they brought their truck into the kitchen; and then the farmer’s widow proceeded to lock up for the night, an elaborate business, which included the fastening of all ground-floor windows and shutters.
“It’s a thievin’ crowd we’ve got about here,” she explained, “and you can’t blame them or anyone when there ain’t enough food to go round. But we have to be careful for ’em. Let ’em go their own way and they’d eat up everything in a week and then starve. It looks like you’re being hard on ’em, but it’s for their own good. There’s some, of course,” she went on, “as you have got to get shut of. Only yesterday I had to send one of ’em packing. A Jew woman she was, called ’erself Mrs Isaacson or something. She was a caution.”
Blanche wondered idly if this were the same Mrs Isaacson who had stayed too long with Aunt May.
The woman of the farm roused the Goslings at sunrise, and she, like Aunt May, had a brisk, practical, morning manner.
She gave the travellers no more food, but when they were nearly ready to take the road again she gave them one valuable piece of information.
“If I was you,” she said, “I’d make through Wycombe straight along the road here, and go up over the hill to Marlow. Mind you, they won’t let every one stop there. But you look two healthy gals enough and it’s getting on towards harvest when there’ll be work as you can do.”