To these questions Mrs. Prettyman made valiant answers: she had a fine spirit, and no wish to let a stranger see the skeleton in the cupboard. But Robinette’s quick instinct pierced through the veil of well-meant bravery and touched the truth.
“Nurse dear,” she said, “you say you’re comfortable, and well off, but you won’t mind my telling you that I just don’t quite believe you.”
“Oh, my dear heart, what’s that you be sayin’? callin’ of me a liar?” chuckled the old woman fondly.
Robinette rose from her seat on the bench and stood back to scrutinize the cottage. It was exquisitely picturesque, but this very picturesqueness constituted its danger; for the place was a perfect death trap. The crumbling cob-walls that had taken on those wonderful patches of green colour, soaked in the damp like a sponge: the irregularity of the thatched roof that looked so well, admitted trickles of rain on wet nights; and the uneven mud floor of the kitchen revealed the fact that the cottage had been built without any proper foundation. The door did not fit, and in cold weather a knife-like draught must run in under it. All this Robinette’s quick, practical glance took in; she gave a little nod or two, murmuring to herself, “A new thatch roof, a new door, a new cement floor.” Then she came and sat down again.
“Tell me now, how much do you have to live on every week, Nurse?” she asked.
“Oh, Miss Robinette––ma’am, I should say––’t is wonderful how I gets on; and then there’s the plum tree––just see the flourish on it, Missie dear! ’T will have a crop o’ plums come autumn will about drag down the boughs! I don’t know how ’t would be with me without I had the plum tree.”
“Do you really make something by it?” Robinette asked.
The old woman chuckled again. “To be sure I makes; makes jam every autumn; a sight o’ jam. Come inside again, me dear, an’ see me jam cupboard and you’ll know.”