So I came to know most of the villagers; and being a quaint child, with a lively and amusing curiosity, which some little refinement and good-breeding stayed from degenerating into impertinence, I was, I believe, very popular.
One afternoon, during the spring that followed our return from London, I had strolled out with Rubens, and was bowling my hoop towards one of the lodges when a poor woman passed by on the drive (which was a public road through the park), her apron to her face, weeping bitterly. I stopped her, and asked what was the matter, and finally made out that she had been to some sale at a farmhouse near, where a certain large blanket had "gone for" five shillings. That she had scraped five shillings together, and had intended to bid for it, but had (with eminent stupidity) managed just to be out of the way when the blanket was sold; and that it had gone for the very sum she could have afforded, to another woman who would only part with it for six and sixpence—eighteenpence more than the price she had paid for it.
The poor woman wept, and said she had had hard work to "raise" the five shillings, and could not possibly find one and sixpence more. And yet she did want the blanket badly, for she had a boy sick in bed, and his throat was so bad—he suffered a deal from the cold, and there wasn't a decent "rag of a blanket" in her house. I did not quite follow her long story, but I gathered that one and sixpence would put an end to her troubles, and at once offered to fetch her the money.
"Where do you live?" I asked.
"The white cottage just beyond the gate, love," she answered.
"I will bring you the money," said I. For to say the truth, I was rather pompous and important about my charitable deeds, and did not dislike playing the part of Sir Bountiful in the cottages. In this case, too, it was a kindness not to take the woman back to the hall, for she had left the sick child alone; and when I arrived at the cottage with the money he complained bitterly at the idea of her leaving him again to get the blanket.
"Let me go a minute, love, and I'll fetch Mrs. Taylor to sit with thee till I get the blanket."
"I don't want a blanket," fretted the child; "I be too hot as 'tis. I don't want to be 'lone."
"If you'll only be a minute, I'll stop with him," said I; and there was some kindness in the offer, for I was really afraid of the boy with his heavy angry eyes and fever petulance. The woman gladly accepted it, and hurried off, despite the child's fretful tears, and his refusing to see in "the young gentleman's" condescension the honour which his mother pointed out. No doubt she only meant to be "a minute," and Mrs. Taylor's dwelling was, to my knowledge, near; but I suppose she had to tell, and her friends to hear, the whole history of the sale, her disappointment and subsequent relief, as a preliminary measure. After which it is probable that Mrs. Taylor had to look at her pie in the oven, or attend to some similar and pressing domestic duty before she could leave her house; and so it was nearly half an hour before they came to my relief. And all this time the sick boy tossed and moaned, and cried for water. I gave him some from a mug on the table, not so much from any precocious gift for sick nursing (for I was simply "frightened out of my wits"), but because the imperative tone of his demand forced me involuntarily into doing what he wanted. He grumbled, when between us we spilt the water on his clothes, and then, soothed for a few seconds, he lay down, till the fever, like a possessing demon, tossed him about once more, and his throat became as parched as ever, and again he moaned for "a drink," and we repeated the process. This time the mug was emptied, and when he called a third time I could only say, "The mug's empty."
"There's a pot behind the door," he muttered, impatiently; "look sharp!"