“I know she likes eggs. She beats ’em into a froth and feeds Charlie with ’em,” said I.
“I think I could eat walnut pickle again if I knew she had the bantams,” sighed Jem, who was really devoted to the little cock-major and the auburn-feathered hens.
“We’ll take ’em this afternoon,” I said.
We did so—in a basket, Eshcol-grape wise, like the walnuts. When we told Mother, she made no objection. She would have given her own head off her shoulders if, by ill-luck, any passer-by had thought of asking for it. Besides, it solved the difficulty of the objectionable names.
Mrs. Wood was very loth to take our bantams,
but of course Jem and I were not going to recall a gift, so she took them at last, and I think she was very much pleased with them.
She had got her cap on again, tied under her chin, and nothing to be seen of her hair but the very grey piece in front. It made her look so different that I could not keep my eyes off her whilst she was talking, though I knew quite well how rude it is to stare. And my head got so full of it that I said at last, in spite of myself, “Please, madam, why is it that part of your hair is grey and part of it dark?”
Her face got rather red, she did not answer for a minute; and Jem, to my great relief, changed the subject, by saying, “We were very much obliged to you for not telling Father about the walnuts.”
Mrs. Wood leaned back against the high carving of her old chair and smiled, and said very slowly, “Would he have been very angry?”
“He’d have flogged us, I expect,” said I.