“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” said Mrs. de Tracy, in whose heart there was room for no sentiment.
“’T would have been ’arder leavin’ it in blossom time,” the old woman explained; but her hearer could not see the point. She rose slowly from her chair and looked around the cottage.
“I am glad to see that you keep your place clean and respectable, Elizabeth,” she said. “I wish you good afternoon.”
Elizabeth never rose from her chair to see her visitor to the door––(an omission which Mrs. de Tracy was not likely to overlook)––she just sat there gazing stupidly around the tiny kitchen and muttering a word or two 228 now and then. At last she got up and tottered to the garden.
“I’ll ’ave to leave it all––leave the old bench as me William did put for me with his own ’ands, and leave Duckie, Duckie can’t never go to Exeter if I goes there,––and leave the plum tree.” She limped across the little bit of sunny turf, and stood under the white canopy of the blossoming tree, leaning against its slender trunk. “Pity ’t is we ain’t rooted in the ground same as the trees are,” she mused. “Then no one couldn’t turn us out; only the Lord Almighty cut us down when our time came; Lord knows I’m about ready for that now––grave-ripe as you may say.” She leaned her poor weary old head against the tree stem and wept, ready, ah! how ready, at that moment, to lay down the burden of her long and toilsome life.
“Good afternoon, Nursie dear!” a clear voice called out in her ear, and Elizabeth started to find that Robinette had tip-toed 229 across the grass and was standing close beside her. She lifted her tear-stained face up to Robinette’s as a child might have done.
“I’ve to quit, Missie,” she sobbed, “to leave me ’ome and Duckie and the plum tree, an’ I’ve no place to go to, and naught but my ten pounds to live on––and ’t won’t keep me without I’ve the plum tree, not when I’ve rent to pay from it; not if I don’t eat nothing but tea an’ bread never again!”
In a moment Robinette’s arms were about her: her soft young cheeks pressed against the withered old face.
“What’s this you’re saying, Nurse?” she cried. “Leaving your cottage? Who said so?”
“It’s true, dear, quite true; ’asn’t the lady ’erself been here to tell me so?”